UNIVERSITY  OF  CA  RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY 


3  1210  01959  7986 


IN  COMMEMORATION  OF  THE  WORK  OF 

THE  EIGHT  THOUSAND  YALE  MEN 
WHO  TOOK  PART  IN  THE  WORLD  WAR 

1914-1918 


HOW  AMERICA  WENT  TO  WAR 

THE  GIANT  HAND 

THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE  I. 

THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE  II. 

THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY  I. 

THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY  II. 

DEMOBILIZATION 


HOW  AMERICA  WENT 
TO  WAR 

AN  ACCOUNT  FROM  OFFICIAL  SOURCES  OF 
THE  NATION'S  WAR  ACTIVITIES 

1917-1920 


^.  . 


THE 

ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

I. 

THE  TRANSPORTATION  OF  TROOPS 

AND  MILITARY  SUPPLIES 

1917-1918 


BY  BENEDICT  CROWELL 

THE  ASSISTANT  SECRETARY  OF  WAR  AND 
DIRECTOR  OF  MUNITIONS   1917-1920 

AND  ROBERT  FORREST  WILSON 

FORMERLY  CAPTAIN,  UNITED  STATES  ARMY 

ILLUSTRATED  WITH  PHOTOGRAPHS  FROM  THE 
COLLECTIONS  OF  THE  WAR  AND  NAVY  DEPARTMENTS 


NEW  HAVEN 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON  •  HUMPHREY  MILFORD  •  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXXI 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
Yale  University  Press 


CONTENTS 
PART  I— THE  LAND 


Preface    . 

Chapter 

I. 

11. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 


XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 


XXII. 
XXIII. 
XXIV. 

XXV. 
XXVI. 


A  Contrast       ..... 

The  Start  of  the  Vanguard 

Mobilizing  Regulars  and  National  Guard 

The  Troop-movement  Office 

Hauling  the  Selectives 

Intercamp   Travel      .... 

The  System  at  Work 

At  the  Height  of  the  Effort 

The  War  Freight  Problem 

The  Army  Solves  Its  Freight  Problem 

Solving  the  National  War  Freight  Problem 

Space-saving  in  Car  and  Ship 

PART  II— THE  PORT 

A  Halt  by  the  Way  . 

In  Camp  Merritt 

Personally  Conducted 

Casuals    . 

The  Embarkation  Service 

Orders  and  Item  Numbers 

The  Process  of  Embarkation 

Some  Notes  of  Tidewater  Activities 

At  Newport  News    . 

PART  III— THE  SEA 

The  Catalogue  of  the  Troopships 
A  Little  Job  of  Marine  Repairs  , 
The  New  Merchant  Marine 
The  Army's  Quest  for  Cargo  Tonnage 
The  Shipping  Control  Committee 


Page 
xiii 

3 
15 
27 
41 
51 
68 

79 
96 
107 
117 
136 
146 


169 
183 

193 
208 
225 
242 
263 
281 
297 


311 
331 
347 
361 

374 


vi  CONTENTS 

Chapter 

XXVI I.  Early  Voyages 

XXVIII.  The  American  Troop  Convoys 

XXIX.  Escapes  and  Losses  . 

XXX.  The  Cargo  Convoys 

XXXI.  The  Technique  of  Convoying 

XXXII.  Marine  Camouflage   . 

XXXIII.  Heroes  Unsung 

APPENDICES 

A.  Primary  Travel  of  the  National  Guard  . 

B.  Train  Schedule  for  Minnesota  Draft  Troops  . 

C.  Export  of  War  Department  Freight 

D.  Freight  Traffic  at  Camp  Grant 

E.  Troops  Embarked,  New  York,  after  July  1,  1918 

F.  List  of  Army  Transports       .... 

G.  The  American  Troop  Convoys 


Page 

387 
408 
427 
446 
467 
492 
512 


535 

540 

549 
551 

553 
564 
603 


Index 


621 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Near  the  End  of  the  Long  Trail       .... 

Convoy  at  Sea    ........ 

Portrait  of  George  Hodges  ..... 

Rough  Riders'  Camp  at  Tampa  (1898) 

The  Rough  Riders  Waiting  To  Embark  for  Cuba 

"A  Perfect  Welter  of  Confusion"       .... 

Transports  and  Dock  at  Tampa  (1898) 

The  Rough  Riders  Seize  the  Yucatan 

The  Rough  Riders  Embark         ..... 

Troops  Entraining  at  Camp  Meade  (1918) 

A  Detrainment  at  Port  of  Embarkation     . 

On  the  Dock  at  Tampa       ...... 

Harvard  Hospital  Unit  Leaving  Boston  (May,  1917) 

Rough  Riding  for  the  Rough  Riders  (Tampa,  1898)  . 

Marines   Entraining   for   Embarkation 

Border  Troops  Off  for  France  . 

"Good-bye,   Broadway!" 

An  Early  Troop  Train 

Some  of  the  First  To  Go  . 

A  Bridge  Patrol 

Chicago  Guardsmen  Out  for  War  Service 

National  Guardsmen  of  New  York  Leaving  for 

Newark  (N.  J.)  Farewell  to  National  Guard 

Fifth  Avenue  Cheers  Its  Departing  Guardsmen 

Off  on  the  Long  Road       .... 

Traveling   Canteen      ..... 

Public  Farewell  to  Cincinnati  National  Guard  Regiment 

Inside  a  Troop  Coach 

"Good-bye,  Boys;  Get  the  Kaiser!" 

A  Nebraska  Town  Says  Farewell 

New  England  Crowds  Watch  the  Troop  Trains 

Railroad  Box  Lunches  for  Traveling  Selectives 

Draft  Train  Leaving  a  Rhode  Island  City  . 

A  New  England  Town  Dines  Its  Inductives 

When  the  War  Began  To  Strike  Home     . 

The  March  to  the  Railroad  Station   . 

A  Montana  Station  Crowd  When  the  Draft  Train  Left 

Parade  of  First  New  York  City  Drafted  Men 

Arm  Bands  in  Lieu  of  Uniforms  for  Selectives 


Camp 


Pass 


Frontispiece,  Vol.  I 
Frontispiece,  Vol.  II 
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6 
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46 
46 
47 
47 
56 
56 
SI 
SI 
62 
62 
63 
63 


VIU 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Michigan  Town  and  Country  Folk  Say  Farewell  at  Station 

A  Boston  Crowd  at  Departure  of  Drafted  Men  . 

Through  the  Cantonment  Personnel  Mill  . 

Lined  Up  for  First  Drill   ..... 

A  Troop  Train  Passes         ..... 

A  Stop  in  a  California  Town     .... 

The  Red  Cross  Canteens  Drew  No  Color  Lines  . 

An  Entrainment  at  Camp  Wadsworth 

Interior  of  Army  Sleeping  Car  .... 

Loading  a  Baggage-kitchen  Car 

A  Unit's  Baggage  Included  Its  Vehicles 

Loading  a  Troop  Coach       ..... 

Food  Stores  for  a  Journey  .... 

Artillery  Traveled  Apart  from  Infantry     . 

Draft  Troops  in  Coach       ..... 

A  Welcome  Break  in  the  Tedium  of  Travel 

Volunteer  Laborers  Leaving  Prescott,  Ariz.,  for  Nitre 

A  Familiar  Station  Scene  in  1918 

A  Red  Cross  Railway  Canteen   .... 

Mail  Facilities  en  Route     ..... 

Wood  and  Canvas  Construction,  Camp  Mills 

Cantonment  Construction,  Camp  Devens     . 

Loading  Platform  at  Army  Depot 

Army  Freight  Loaded  at  a  Munitions  Plant 

Truck  Ready  for  Crating  at  Camp  Holabird 

Three-way-end  Crate  Construction 

Testing  Drum  at  Forest  Products  Laboratory 

Trench-mortar  Shell  Boxes  after  Tumbling  Test 

Grenade  Boxes  after  Test  ..... 

Ordnance  Department  Boxes  for  Browning  Rifles 

Improved  Box  for  Browning  Rifles   . 

An  Army  Baling  Machine  ..... 

Army  Clothing  Bales  Ready  for  Shipment  . 

Portrait  of  Brigadier  General  Frank  T.  Hines  . 

Overseas  Transients  Occupying  Barracks,  Camp  Merritt 

Reading  Room  in  Merritt  Hall  .... 

Troops  Arriving  at  Camp  Merritt  Station  . 

Marching  into  Camp  Merritt       .... 

Unloading  Quartermaster  Supplies  at  Camp  Merritt 

Troops  Drawing  Supplies  in  Street,  Camp  Merritt 

Quartermaster  Warehouse,  Camp  Merritt   . 

Empty  Boxes  Showing  Tremendous  Issue  of  Supplies 

Troop  Baggage  Arriving  at  Camp  Merritt  . 

Salvaging  Clothing  Discarded  by  Embarking  Troops 

Overseas  Troops  Arriving  at  Camp  Merritt 

Emergency  Ration  To  Be  Carried  on  Board  Ship 

An  Army  Naturalization  Court  .... 

Rest  on  Road  to  Alpine  Landing 


Opposite  page 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Turn  in  Old  Cornwallis  Road  Descending  Palisades 

Troops  at  Alpine  Boarding  Ferryboats  for  Piers 

Casuals  Receiving  Embarkation  Instructions 

Entrance  to  Stockade,  Camp  Merritt  . 

Leviathan  Leaving  for  France,  August  3,  1918    . 

On  One  of  Leviathan's  Decks,  August  3,  1918     . 

A  Crowded  Ship,  Every  Man  Identified 

The  Madazvaska  Takes  a  Crowd,  June  30,  1918  . 

Looking  Forward  on  U.  S.  A.  T.  Mercury,  June  30,  1918 

Looking  Aft  on  Mercury     . 

At  Alpine,  Waiting  for  Ferryboats 

Boarding  Ferry  for  Piers   . 

Landing  from  Ferry  at  Hoboken 

Entering  Pier  from  River  End  . 

Coffee  and  Rolls  at  Red  Cross  Pier  Canteen 

First  Food  Since  3 :  00  A.M.        .    *     . 

"Safe-arrival"  Cards  Slipped  into  Caps 

A  "Safe-arrival"  Card 

Checked  against  Company  Records 

Ship  Billet  Cards  at  Foot  of  Gangplank 

Fresh  Arrivals  from  Embarkation  Camp 

Boarding  Ship     ..... 

Mail  Sack  at  Head  of  Gangplank 

Troop  Mail  Held  at  Hoboken     . 

A  Gangplank  Leading  into  U.  S.  A.  T.  Leviathan 

Last  Letters  Home  before  Sailing  for  France 

Reinforcing  Rods  Laid  in  Concrete  Ship  Construction 

Kapok  Life  Preservers  Supplied  to  Transports 

Life  Preservers  on  Leviathan 

Life  Rafts  on  Hoboken  Army  Pier     . 

Emergency  Life  Rafts  for  Troop  Transports 

Equipping  Lifeboats  for  Transports   . 

Embarking  Troops  Marching  through  Newport  News 

Troops  Approaching  Pier,  Newport  News 

Checking  Troops  aboard  Transport,  Newport  News 

Loaded  Troopship  Leaving  Newport  News 

Boarding  Ship  at  Newport  News 

Crowded  Transport  Leaving  Pier,  Newport  News 

Portrait  of  P.  A.  S.  Franklin       .... 

Mauretania  Leaving  New  York  with  Troops 

Departure  of  Leviathan,  August  3,  1918 

German  Ships  Interned  in  North  fliver.  New  York 

Seizure  of  Austrian  Cargo  Vessel  Eray 

1.  Broken  Cylinder      ...... 

2.  Patch  in  Place  Ready  for  Welding 

3.  Welded  ....... 

Repaired  Cylinder  on  S.  S.  Princess  Irene  . 
Requisitioned  Hull  of  Troopship  Orizaba  . 


IX 


Opposite  page   207 

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«   265 

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"     "   296 

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"  311 

"  330 

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"  352 

ILLUSTRATIONS 


War  Construction  of  Wood  Ships 

Seizure  of  Dutch  Vessel  Zeelandia 

Hog  Island  Shipyards  ..... 

Line  of  Shipways  at  Hog  Island 

Great  Lakes  Steamer  Being  Cut  in  Two 

Gun  Platform  and  Gun  at  Stern  of  Troopship  . 

Dutch  Ships  Tied  Up  on  Day  of  Seizure  . 

Launching  of  a  "West"  Ship       .... 

Wooden  Ships  Building  at  Tampa,  Florida 

A  New  Cargo  Transport  Takes  the  Water  . 

A  New  Cargo  Carrier  Camouflaged     . 

Army  Cargo  Base  at  Port  Newark,  New  Jersey  . 

Cargo  Transports  Loading  at  Army  Dock,  Brooklyn 

Interior  of  an  Army  Cargo  Pier,  Brooklyn  . 

Loading  Locomotive  on  Wheels  into  Cargo  Transport 

A  Troopship  in  Convoy       ..... 

Destroyers  Arriving  at  Rendezvous  with  Convoy 

First  American  Destroyers  Arriving  at  Queenstown 

Destroyer  Gun  Crew  Waiting  for  Shot  at  Submarine 

American  Transport  Docking  at  St.  Nazaire 

Warning  Sign  on  Troopship        .... 

Abandon-ship  Drill  on  Troopship 

Standee   Berths    ....... 

1.  The  Wrong  Way  at  Abandon-ship  Alarm 

2.  The  Right  Way 

One  of  the  Best  Defenses  against  the  U-Boat     . 

Emergency  Life  Rafts  on  Leviathan  . 

Gun  Crew  on  Destroyer       ..... 

Sailors  Watching  Troopship 

Destroyer  Racing  To  Attack  Enemy  Submarine  . 

Gun  Crew  on  American  Troopship  Orizaba 

On  Mt.  Vernon  Immediately  after  Torpedoing  . 

Gun  Crew  of  Troopship  in  Action 

American  Convoy  in  War  Zone  .... 

American  Destroyer  in  War  Zone — View  from  Dirigible 

Destroyers  Joining  Convoy  at  Sunrise 

Destroyer  Making  Smoke  Screen  To  Shield  Convoy 

Convoy  as  Seen  from  Flanking  Destroyers  . 

Destroyers  Leading  Cargo  Convoy 

Aerial  View  of  American  Cargo  Convoy  near  Englan 

Aerial  View  of  Submarine  Discharging  Torpedo 

Aerial  Protection  to  Transports  near  Coasts 

Submarine  with  Periscope  Awash,  as  Seen  from  Airpl 

Wake  of  Zigzagging  Vessel  in  Convoy 

An  Attack  on  a  Convoy       ..... 

Destroyers  Protecting  Transports  with  Smoke  Screen 

Destroyer  Circling  Convoy  To  Attack  U-Boat  . 

Laying  Out  Camouflage  Design  .... 


Opposite  page  352 
353 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


XI 


Siboney  Camouflaged  with  Dazzle  Design  . 
Tottori  Maru  in  Camouflage  Which  Saved  Her  . 
Philadelphia  Camouflaged  by  Mackey  System     . 

1.  Camouflaged  Model  Apparently  Steering  across  Stern 

2.  Models  Shown  To  Be  on  Parallel  Courses 
Proteus  (Model)  Appears  To  Head  Northeast  . 
Extreme  Design  of  Geometric-solid  Type   . 
Model  of  Hog  Island  Ship  Camouflaged     . 

An  Example  of  Extreme  Dazzle  Design 
American  Cargo  Transport,  Showing  After  Gun 
Gun  Crew  on  Cargo  Transport  ..... 

Torpedoed !  ........ 

The  Dread  Silhouette  of  a  Submarine  Running  Awash 

Two-periscope    Submarine    Submerging 

Aerial  View  of  Submarine  One  Hundred  Feet  Submerged 

Forty  Lives  Lost  When  Missanabie  Sank  . 

Destroyer  Gun  Crew  Firing  at  U-Boat 

The  Final  Plunge       ....... 

A  Guardian  of  the  Transatlantic  Highway 


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MAPS 
Port  of  Embarkation,  New  York 
Port  of  Embarkation,  Newport  News 
Route  of  the  First  American  Troop  Convoy 
The  French  Coast       ..... 


"      172 

Between  pages  300-301 

"      402-403 

Opposite  page  479 


PREFACE 

WHEN  the  guns  and  the  ammunition,  the  airplanes, 
the  motor  trucks,  the  general  equipment,  and  the 
food  and  clothing  of  the  American  Army  in  the 
World  War  stood  ready  on  the  loading  platforms  of  American 
factories  and  filled  the  army  warehouses,  the  problem  of  sup- 
plying the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  with  their  necessi- 
ties was  as  yet  by  no  means  solved.  Those  materials  had  still  to 
travel  a  route  the  sources  of  which  touched  every  producing 
point  within  the  United  States,  and  of  which  the  main  artery 
crossed  the  Atlantic.  This  was  a  military  supply  situation  of 
unprecedented  difficulty.  No  nation  had  ever  attempted  to 
maintain  a  great  army  over  such  a  distance,  nor  was  a  line 
of  supply  ever  so  beset  with  peril. 

Yet,  while  the  forges  and  shops  of  the  land  were  fighting 
their  war  manufacturing  battles  to  ultimate  triumph,  our 
national  genius  for  transportation  rose  superior  to  conditions 
and  wrought  the  saving  miracle  of  the  struggle.  It  carried  to 
France  the  two  million  men  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Forces,  together  with  such  munitions  and  supplies  as  the  grand 
strategy  dictated.  That  achievement  will  probably  forever 
stand  as  America's  most  signal  contribution  to  the  cause  of 
the  Entente  and  its  associated  nations. 

The  weight  of  American  manpower  proved  to  be  a  decisive 
factor  in  the  defeat  of  Germany  and  her  allies.  Every  Ameri- 
can expected  this  result  ultimately,  but  few  expected  it  in 
1918.  Hence,  even  while  the  ships  were  carrying  the  conquer- 
ing host  of  American  troops  to  France,  the  military  transpor- 
tation organization  was  already  preparing  for  the  effort  which 
was  to  freight  across  the  ocean  in  1919,  according  to  inter- 
allied plan,  an  irresistible  weight  of  American  guns,  ammuni- 
tion, and  other  war  materials.  To  this  goal  was  directed  our 


xiv  PREFACE 

whole  war  industry.  Had  the  war  continued  for  another  six 
months,  it  is  probable — nay,  certain — that  the  Atlantic  would 
have  buoyed  up  an  eastward  movement  of  American  munitions 
every  bit  as  astonishing  as  that  transatlantic  procession  of 
Yankee  troopships  in  the  spring,  summer,  and  early  autumn 
of  1918. 

Broadly  analyzed,  the  supply  of  the  American  expedition 
fell  into  two  divisions,  personnel  and  materiel^  men  and  things. 
As  the  War  Department  expanded  in  organization,  each  of 
these  two  divisions  tended  to  segregate  its  activities  from  those 
of  the  other.  There  occurred  a  crystallization  under  pressure, 
the  pressure  of  the  emergency.  Eventually  all  the  activities 
relating  to  personnel — the  conscription,  classification,  and 
training  of  troops,  and  the  erection  of  military  units — 
clustered  within  the  administrative  province  of  the  Secretary 
of  War  and  the  General  Staff,  The  enterprises  in  materiel — 
including  principally  the  production  of  munitions — came  to 
be  the  charge  of  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  who  later 
bore  the  added  title  of  Director  of  Munitions. 

Such  a  demarcation  was  not  sharply  evident  during  the 
period  of  hostilities,  although  it  actually  existed.  Nominally, 
the  General  Staff  was  in  control  of  the  production  of  supplies, 
because  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  was  a 
division  of  the  General  Staff;  but  this  control  was  only  nomi- 
nal. In  practice  the  General  Staff  Division  of  Purchase,  Stor- 
age, and  Traffic  was  the  "overhead"  through  which  the 
Director  of  Munitions  functioned  in  the  procurement  and 
delivery  of  materiel.  The  allocation  of  supplies,  once  they  had 
been  manufactured  and  delivered  to  French  ports,  was  prop- 
erly the  concern  of  the  General  Staff;  but  the  manufacture  of 
those  supplies  and  their  transportation  to  the  point  of  delivery 
were  not  inherently  general  staff  functions.  It  was  hard  for 
some  general  staff  officers  to  see  this  distinction.  The  Director 
of  Munitions  produced  the  supplies  and  delivered  them  to  the 
General  Staff  at  the  ports  in  France,  functioning  through  the 
Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic.  That  great  indus- 
trial organization  was  joined  to  the  General  Staff  only  because 


PREFACE  XV 

there  seemed  to  be  no  other  place  for  it  in.  the  administrative 
scheme  as  it  then  existed. 

Military  transportation  was  not  a  supply,  but  an  agency: 
yet  it  was  industrial  in  implication,  and  therefore,  quite  nat- 
urally, it  became  integral  with  the  group  of  material  activities 
directed  by  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War. 

Although  the  transportation  organization's  chief  problems 
were  those  connected  with  the  movement  of  military  freight, 
it  also  had  charge  of  the  travel  of  troops.  Thus  it  occurred  that 
the  office  of  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  otherwise  con- 
cerned only  with  the  inanimate  elements  of  warfare,  found 
itself  dealing  intimately  with  one  of  the  most  interesting,  and 
certainly  the  most  remarkable,  of  its  human  phases — the  trans- 
portation of  the  men  of  the  Army.  The  chapters  which  follow, 
therefore,  while  not  slighting  the  less  dramatic  movement  of 
our  army  supplies  by  land  and  sea,  are  devoted  principally 
to  the  progress  of  the  Expeditionary  Army  from  its  two  million 
American  homes  to  the  shore  of  France. 

The  investigation  from  which  this  record  results  was  con- 
ducted while  the  return  of  our  troops  from  Europe  was  at  its 
maximum  volume  and  the  transportation  organization  still 
intact.  The  story  here  presented  comes  not  only  from  the 
official  documents  and  ifiles,  but  also  from  the  memories  of  the 
men  who  did  the  work. 

B.  C.  &  R.  F.  W. 
Washington,  D.  C, 

November,  ig20. 


THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 


PART  ONE 
THE  LAND 


Photo  by  Harris  iS  Ewing 

GEORGE  HODGES 
DIED,  MARCH  14,  1919 

As  head  of  the  troop-movement  office^  he  was  field  marshal 
of  troop  travel  in  A?nerica 


CHAPTER  I 
A  CONTK\ST 

IN  the  twenty-year  period  which  separated  our  two  over- 
seas wars,  that  with  Spain  in  1898  and  that  with 
Germany  in  1917-1918,  America  had  made  military 
progress ;  but  in  no  province  of  the  profession  of  war  had  the 
strides  been  longer  or  the  distance  covered  greater  than  in  the 
science  of  military  transportation.  The  marching  power  of  an 
army  is  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  important  to  the  success  of 
its  campaigns  as  its  courage  and  fighting  ability.  Some  of  the 
greatest  soldiers  in  all  history — Hannibal,  Julius  Csesar,  Gus- 
tavus  Adolphus,  even  Napoleon — built  their  military  reputa- 
tions largely  upon  the  ability  to  move  their  troops.  In  their 
days,  however,  armies  usually  traveled  on  their  own  feet,  and 
the  great  strategist  staked  as  heavily  upon  the  leg  muscles  of 
his  soldiers  as  upon  their  spirit  and  valor.  To-day,  the  motor 
truck,  the  passenger  and  freight  train,  and  the  ocean  trans- 
port have  been  substituted  for  the  thews  and  sinews  of  troops ; 
and  the  movement  of  great  bodies  of  soldiery  has  become  a 
matter  of  the  organization  and  management  of  the  most 
intricate  of  all  industries — transportation. 

Our  experiences  in  sending  an  overseas  expedition  to  Cuba 
in  1898  showed  the  United  States  her  shortcomings  in  mili- 
tary transportation  and  the  magnitude  of  the  lessons  she  had 
yet  to  learn.  Thereafter  our  country  maintained  a  force  in  the 
Philippine  Islands  and  in  other  outlying  possessions;  and  the 
necessity  of  providing  replacements  and  supplies  for  these 
troops  also  gave  our  military  authorities  a  measure  of  practice 
in  the  management  of  ocean  transportation.  A  third  most 
practical  experience  was  to  come  in  1916,  when  with  notable 
efficiency  we  assembled  on  the  Mexican  border  the  greatest 


4  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

concentration  of  American  troops  since  the  Civil  War.  Yet 
the  Spanish  War  and  all  of  the  succeeding  martial  episodes 
of  our  history,  added  together,  scarcely  afforded  us  an  ade- 
quate discipline  and  preparation  for  the  transportation  crisis 
which  this  nation  was  to  face  when  she  went  to  war  with 
Germany.  In  comparison  with  the  accomplishment  of  sending 
2,000,000  men  and  their  supplies  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
to  France,  the  whole  troop  movement  of  the  Spanish  War 
takes  rank  with  only  the  more  commonplace  phases  of  trans- 
portation in  1918;  the  maintenance  of  forces  in  our  island 
possessions  becomes  a  mere  incident  of  traffic;  and  the  border 
mobilization  which  excited  the  whole  country  in  1916  was 
little  more  than  a  hint  of  what,  in  the  spring  and  summer  of 
1918,  was  to  become  a  weekly,  almost  a  daily,  procedure. 

The  reader,  if  he  is  fully  to  appraise  the  quality  and  merit 
of  the  system  which  handled  our  military  transportation  dur- 
ing the  recent  hostilities,  to  understand  the  difficulties  meas- 
ured and  mastered  before  that  system  could  be  what  it  was,  to 
estimate  the  prodigious  sum  of  its  accomplishments  and  appre- 
ciate the  smooth  perfection  of  its  processes,  must  begin  with 
a  quickened  memory  of  1898,  when  we  made  our  last  previous 
great  effort  in  military  transportation.  Against  the  melancholy 
background  of  the  war  with  Spain,  the  history  of  our  military 
transportation  since  1917  is  brilliant  indeed. 

Tampa,  on  the  Gulf  coast,  was  the  chief  port  of  embarka- 
tion for  the  American  expedition  sent  to  Cuba  in  1898.  For 
what  occurred  in  Tampa  let  us  accept  the  testimony  of  an 
illustrious  eyewitness;  one  who,  so  far  from  holding  a  preju- 
dice, characterizes  in  lenient  terms,  even  if  he  does  not  con- 
done, the  failures  of  those  momentous  days.  In  The  Rough 
Riders,*  Theodore  Roosevelt  refers  to  the  commander  of 
troops  in  1898  as  having  "positively  unlimited  opportunity 
for  the  display  of  individual  initiative,"  and  as  being  in  no 
danger  "of  finding  his  faculties  of  self-help  numbed  by  be- 
coming a  cog  in  a  gigantic  and  smooth-running  machine." 

*  The  Rough  Riders;  copyright,  1899,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.  Quotations 
herein  used  by  permission  of  the  publishers. 


A  CONTRAST  5 

"If  such  a  battalion  chief  wants  to  get  anything  or  go  any- 
where he  must  do  it  by  exercising  every  pound  of  resource, 
inventiveness,  and  audacity  he  possesses.  The  help,  advice,  and 
superintendence  he  gets  from  the  outside  will  be  of  the  most 
general,  not  to  say  superficial,  character.  .  .  .  When  he  wishes 
to  embark  his  regiment,  he  will  have  to  fight  for  his  railway 
cars  exactly  as  he  fights  for  his  transport  when  it  comes  to 
going  across  the  sea;  and  on  his  journey  his  men  will  or  will 
not  have  food,  and  his  horses  will  or  will  not  have  water  and 
hay,  and  the  trains  will  or  will  not  make  connections,  in  exact 
correspondence  to  the  energy  and  success  of  his  own  efforts 
to  keep  things  moving  straight." 

The  Rough  Riders  had  been  recruited  among  adventurous 
millionaires,  clubmen,  and  college  athletes  of  the  East,  and 
among  the  rough  cowmen,  sheriffs,  "lungers,"  and  prospectors 
of  the  Far  West,  with  a  spirited  and  eager  addition  from  the 
other  principal  sections  of  the  United  States.  Leonard  Wood 
was  colonel  of  the  regiment  and  Theodore  Roosevelt  lieuten- 
ant colonel.  The  organization  gathered  at  San  Antonio,  Texas, 
and,  after  two  or  three  weeks  of  military  training,  received 
orders  to  proceed  by  train  to  Tampa.  The  regiment  entrained 
in  seven  sections,  Colonel  Wood  commanding  the  first  three 
and  Lieutenant  Colonel  Roosevelt  the  remaining  four.  It  took 
the  transportation  service  of  that  time  four  days  to  move  the 
sections  from  San  Antonio  to  Tampa,  "and,"  comments  Col- 
onel Roosevelt  in  The  Rough  Riders^  "I  doubt  if  anybody 
who  was  on  the  trip  will  soon  forget  it."  The  railroads  had 
promised  to  move  the  regiment  to  Tampa  in  forty-eight  hours. 
"Our  experience  in  loading  was  enough  to  show  that  the 
promise  would  not  be  made  good.  There  were  no  proper  facili- 
ties for  getting  the  horses  on  or  off  the  cars,  nor  for  feeding 
or  watering  them;  and  there  was  endless  confusion  and  delay 
among  the  railway  officials.  I  marched  my  four  sections  over 
in  the  afternoon,  the  first  three  having  taken  the  entire  day  to 
get  off.  We  occupied  the  night." 

After  describing  some  of  the  difficulties  in  entraining  his 
troops  and  their  impedimenta.  Colonel  Roosevelt  continued: 


6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

"Meanwhile  I  superintended  not  merely  my  own  men,  but 
the  railroad  men;  and  when  the  delays  of  the  latter,  and  their 
inability  to  understand  what  was  necessary,  grew  past  bearing, 
I  took  charge  of  the  trains  myself,  so  as  to  ensure  the  horse 
cars  of  each  section  being  coupled  with  the  baggage  cars  of 
that  section."  But  after  the  animals  and  baggage  were  suc- 
cessfully loaded,  it  was  discovered  that  no  passenger  cars  were 
in  evidence.  It  was  then  nearly  midnight.  Some  of  the  men 
had  scattered  in  the  darkness,  and  it  was  necessary  to  gather 
them  up  again  from  the  "vile  drinking-booths  around  the 
stock  yards."  Finally  this  was  accomplished,  and,  the  pas- 
senger cars  still  not  having  come,  the  men  were  ordered  to 
lie  down  beside  the  railroad  tracks.  Not  until  dawn  did  the 
passenger  coaches  arrive. 

During  four  hot  and  dusty  days  the  train  crawled  across 
the  South.  Yet  the  officers  of  the  Rough  Riders  did  not 
find  time  dragging  on  their  hands.  "There  was  enough  delay 
and  failure  to  make  connections  on  the  part  of  the  railroad 
people  to  keep  me  entirely  busy.  ...  It  happened  that  we 
usually  made  our  longest  stops  at  night,  and  this  meant  we 
were  up  all  night  long.  .  .  . 

"It  was  four  days  later  that  we  disembarked,  in  a  perfect 
welter  of  confusion.  Tampa  lay  in  the  pine-covered  sand-flats 
at  the  end  of  a  one-track  railroad,  and  everything  connected 
with  both  military  and  railroad  matters  was  in  an  almost  inex- 
tricable tangle.  There  was  no  one  to  meet  us  or  to  tell  us 
where  we  were  to  camp,  and  no  one  to  issue  us  food  for  the 
first  twenty-four  hours;  while  the  railroad  people  unloaded 
us  wherever  they  pleased,  or  rather  wherever  the  jam  of  all 
kinds  of  trains  rendered  it  possible.  We  had  to  buy  the  men 
food  out  of  our  own  pockets,  and  to  seize  wagons  in  order 
to  get  our  spare  baggage  taken  to  the  camping  ground  which 
we  at  last  found  had  been  allotted  to  us." 

Eventually,  however,  the  camp  was  made.  Military  drilling 
began.  The  war  correspondents — Richard  Harding  Davis  and 
Frederic  Remington  among  them — called;  social  life  began; 
and  (a  circumstance  which,  for  all  we  know,  may  have  had  a 


A  CONTRAST  7 

bearing  on  events  nineteen  years  later)  the  military  attaches^ 
including  the  German  attache^  came  to  Tampa  to  look  on  and, 
no  doubt,  privately  to  marvel. 

Four  or  five  days  later,  just  as  the  Rough  Riders  were  pre- 
paring for  an  indefinite  stay,  notification  came  that  the  expe- 
dition would  start  at  once  for  a  destination  unknown,  and 
that  of  the  Rough-Rider  Regiment  eight  troops  without  their 
horses  would  be  taken  along. 

"It  was  the  evening  of  June  7  when  we  suddenly  received 
orders  that  the  expedition  was  to  start  from  Port  Tampa,  nine 
miles  distant  by  rail,  at  daybreak  the  following  morning;  and 
that  if  we  were  not  aboard  our  transport  by  that  time  we  could 
not  go.  We  had  no  intention  of  getting  left,  and  prepared  at 
once  for  the  scramble  which  was  evidently  about  to  take  place. 
As  the  number  and  capacity  of  the  transports  were  known, 
or  ought  to  have  been  known,  and  as  the  number  and  size  of 
the  regiments  to  go  were  also  known,  the  task  of  allotting  each 
regiment  or  fraction  of  a  regiment  to  its  proper  transport,  and 
arranging  that  the  regiments  and  the  transports  should  meet 
in  due  order  at  the  dock,  ought  not  to  have  been  difficult. 
However,  no  arrangements  were  made  in  advance;  and  we 
were  allowed  to  shove  and  hustle  for  ourselves  as  best  we 
could,  on  much  the  same  principles  that  had  governed  our 
preparations  hitherto. 

"We  were  ordered  to  be  at  a  certain  track  with  all  our 
baggage  at  midnight,  there  to  take  a  train  for  Port  Tampa. 
At  the  appointed  time  we  turned  up,  but  the  train  did  not. 
The  men  slept  heavily,  while  Wood  and  I  and  various  other 
officers  wandered  about  in  search  of  information  which  no  one 
could  give.  We  now  and  then  came  across  a  Brigadier  General, 
or  even  a  Major  General;  but  nobody  knew  anything.  Some 
regiments  got  aboard  the  trains  and  some  did  not,  but  as  none 
of  the  trains  started  this  made  little  difference.  At  three  o'clock 
we  received  orders  to  march  over  to  an  entirely  different  track, 
and  away  we  went.  No  train  appeared  on  this  track  either; 
but  at  six  o'clock  some  coal-cars  came  by,  and  these  we  seized. 
By  various  arguments  we  persuaded  the  engineer  in  charge  of 


8  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  train  to  back  us  down  the  nine  miles  to  Port  Tampa, 
where  we  arrived  covered  with  coal-dust,  but  with  all  our 
belongings. 

"The  railroad  tracks  ran  out  on  the  quay,  and  the  trans- 
ports, which  had  been  anchored  in  midstream,  were  gradually 
being  brought  up  alongside  the  quay  and  loaded.  The  trains 
were  unloading  wherever  they  happened  to  be,  no  attention 
whatever  being  paid  to  the  possible  position  of  the  transport 
on  which  the  soldiers  were  to  go.  Colonel  Wood  and  I  jumped 
off  and  started  on  a  hunt,  which  soon  convinced  us  that  we  had 
our  work  cut  out  if  we  were  to  get  a  transport  at  all.  From 
the  highest  General  down,  nobody  could  tell  us  where  to  go 
to  find  out  what  transport  we  were  to  have.  At  last  we  were 
informed  that  we  were  to  hunt  up  the  depot  quartermaster. 
Colonel  Humphrey.  We  found  his  office,  where  his  assistant 
informed  us  that  he  didn't  know  where  the  Colonel  was,  but 
believed  him  to  be  asleep  upon  one  of  the  transports.  This 
seemed  odd  at  such  a  time;  but  so  many  of  the  methods  in 
vogue  were  odd,  that  we  were  quite  prepared  to  accept  it  as 
a  fact.  However,  it  proved  not  to  be  such,  but  for  an  hour 
Colonel  Humphrey  might  just  as  well  have  been  asleep,  as 
nobody  knew  where  he  was  and  nobody  could  find  him,  and 
the  quay  was  crammed  with  some  ten  thousand  men,  most 
of  whom  were  working  at  cross  purposes. 

"At  last,  however,  after  over  an  hour's  industrious  and  rapid 
search  through  this  swarming  ant-heap  of  humanity.  Wood 
and  I,  who  had  separated,  found  Colonel  Humphrey  at  nearly 
the  same  time  and  were  allotted  a  transport — the  Yucatan. 
She  was  out  in  midstream,  so  Wood  seized  a  stray  launch  and 
boarded  her.  At  the  same  time  I  happened  to  find  out  that  she 
had  previously  been  allotted  to  two  other  regiments — the 
Second  Regular  Infantry  and  the  Seventy-first  New  York 
\'olunteers,  which  latter  regiment  alone  contained  more  men 
than  could  be  put  aboard  her.  Accordingly,  I  ran  at  full  speed 
to  our  train ;  and  leaving  a  strong  guard  with  the  baggage,  I 
double-quicked  the  rest  of  the  regiment  up  to  the  boat,  just  in 
time  to  board  her  as  she  came  into  the  quay,  and  then  hold 


A  CONTRAST  9 

her  against  the  Second  Regulars  and  the  Seventy-first,  who 
had  arrived  a  little  too  late,  being  a  shade  less  ready  than  we 
were  in  the  matter  of  individual  initiative.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  expostulation,  but  we  had  possession;  and  as  the  ship 
could  not  contain  half  of  the  men  who  had  been  told  to  go 
aboard  her,  the  Seventy-first  went  away,  as  did  all  but  four 
companies  of  the  Second,  These  latter  we  took  aboard.  Mean- 
while a  General  had  caused  our  train  to  be  unloaded  at  the 
end  of  the  quay  furthest  from  where  the  ship  was;  and  the 
hungry,  tired  men  spent  most  of  the  day  in  the  labor  of 
bringing  down  their  baggage  and  the  food  and  ammunition." 

Loading  accomplished,  the  Yucatan  dropped  down  the 
stream  and  anchored;  and  because  of  a  confusion  in  orders, 
the  whole  expedition  remained  on  its  transports  in  Tampa 
Bay  for  nearly  a  week  thereafter.  The  soldiers,  packed  into 
the  ships  like  sardines,  stewed  and  sweltered  in  the  burning 
heat  of  a  subtropical  June. 

For  a  contrast  to  this  distressing  picture,  let  us  anticipate 
a  noteworthy  episode  of  this  narrative  by  following  the  train 
movement  and  overseas  embarkation  of  the  infantry  regiments 
of  the  Seventy-ninth  Division  in  the  recent  war.  The  Seventy- 
ninth  was  a  division  of  the  National  Army,  made  up  largely 
of  drafted  troops  and  formed  and  trained  at  Camp  Meade, 
Maryland,  near  the  city  of  Washington.  It  was  called  to 
France  early  in  July,  1918,  when  the  paramount  need  of  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces  was  for  infantry.  Consequently 
this  division  moved  without  its  artillery. 

The  preparation  for  the  embarkation  of  the  Seventy-ninth 
began  on  the  nation's  Independence  Day,  when  three  freight 
trains  moved  out  of  Camp  Meade,  bearing  the  division's  bag- 
gage directly  to  the  ship's  side  at  Hoboken.  These  trains  were 
followed  on  July  5  by  four  passenger  sections  carrying  the 
headquarters  company  of  the  division  and  detachments  to  go 
aboard  the  transports  in  advance  of  the  main  body  of  men, 
there  to  be  instructed  in  the  correct  assignment  of  men  to  their 
quarters  and  in  the  routine  which  must  be  followed  while  the 
division  was  crossing  the  ocean. 


lo  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

The  complete  movement  of  the  infantry  units  of  the  divi- 
sion, numbering  over  18,000  men,  or  thirty-six  times  as  many 
as  Colonels  Wood  and  Roosevelt  had  led  aboard  the  Yucatan, 
was  accomplished  in  the  two  following  days,  July  6  and  7. 
Two  railroads  connect  Camp  Meade  with  the  water  front  at 
New  York,  the  Pennsylvania  and  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio.  Not 
only  were  the  18,000  men  handled  over  these  two  lines  in  two 
days,  but  the  movement  was  accomplished  in  less  than  an 
eleven-hour  period  in  each  of  the  two  days,  all  the  trains 
being  put  through  from  start  to  destination  each  day  between 
three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  and  two  o'clock  in  the  early 
morning.  Loaded  trains  left  the  camp  at  intervals  as  brief  as 
fifteen  minutes. 

On  July  6  the  first  train  started  from  Camp  Meade  at  4.00 
p.m.  with  343  men  aboard,  and  the  last  of  the  sixteen  sections 
which  departed  on  this  day  pulled  out  at  8.45  p.m.  with  549 
men  on  board.  One  of  the  July  6  trains  carried  756  men,  and 
the  trains  averaged  more  than  500  passengers  each.  The  aver- 
age time  of  loading  a  train  was  less  than  twenty  minutes.  Also 
on  July  6,  a  heavy  consignment  of  the  division's  baggage 
left  Camp  Meade  by  freight  for  Newport  News,  Virginia, 
whence  it  was  to  cross  the  ocean  in  a  cargo  convoy  and  rejoin 
the  division  in  France. 

On  the  following  day,  July  7,  the  movement  was  even 
heavier,  for  nineteen  passenger  trains  left  Camp  Meade  with  an 
average  of  more  than  500  men  each.  The  first  section  left 
the  camp  at  3.15  p.m.,  and  the  last  section  of  the  regular 
movement  at  8.30  o'clock — a  rate  of  departure  requiring  each 
section  to  be  loaded  in  about  twenty  minutes,  average  time. 
Two  supplementary  sections,  following  later  in  the  evening, 
carried  the  soldiers  detailed  to  see  that  neither  men  nor  mate- 
rials were  left  behind  and  that  the  camp  was  ready  to  be  turned 
over  in  good  order  to  the  division's  successors. 

It  should  be  noted  that  these  troops  went  directly  from 
their  training  camp  to  their  ships,  without  any  delay  at  an 
embarkation  camp.  The  troop  trains  began  arriving  at 
Hoboken  in  the  early  evening  of  each  of  the  two  days;  and 


Frrni    '111,     Jl  C.I    I.  I!,,,,     Crlh.tun 


TROOPS  ENTRAINING  AT  CAMP  MEADE 

(1918) 


Photo   by    Siynal   Corps 


A  DETRAINMENT  AT  PORT  OF  EMBARKATION 


A  CONTRAST  ii 

after  (i)  a  quick  and  efficient  inspection,  (2)  the  issue,  if 
necessary,  of  articles  of  clothing  or  ordnance  to  make  up  the 
full  personal  equipment  of  each  soldier,  and  (3)  the  final 
medical  and  other  necessary  inspections,  the  men  went  directly 
aboard  their  ships.  The  trains  reached  Hoboken  every  few 
minutes,  but  so  efficiently  was  the  embarkation  handled  that 
there  was  no  cramming  at  the  piers,  and  there  was  always 
transport  space  ready  for  each  unit  as  it  arrived.  When  a 
transport  was  loaded,  it  dropped  down  to  the  Lower  Bay  and 
anchored.  Early  on  the  morning  of  the  third  day  the  whole 
convoy  was  ready  to  sail. 

Note,  too,  that,  although  this  movement  happens  to  have 
been  the  quickest  transfer  of  a  division  during  the  war,  it  was 
not  then  regarded  by  the  military  transportation  organiza- 
tion as  anything  out  of  the  ordinary.  It  was  simply  one  inci- 
dent in  the  routine.  Not  until  the  armistice  gave  leisure  for 
retrospection  did  the  service  check  up  its  figures  and  discover 
that  it  had  set  a  record. 

In  Germany,  in  France,  and  in  England,  too,  the  regular 
railroad  service  to  civilians  was  greatly  upset  and,  in  periods 
of  heaviest  military  traffic,  sometimes  suspended  altogether, 
because  the  rail  facilities  in  those  countries  were  burdened 
beyond  their  limits  by  the  necessities  of  the  armies.  The 
meager  passenger  train  equipment  of  the  Continental  railroads 
was  utterly  inadequate  to  military  needs,  and  troops  invariably 
traveled  in  accommodations  normally  assigned  to  live-stock 
and  other  freight.  The  French  box  car  with  its  war-time  load- 
ing instructions,  "40  hommes,  8  clievaux^^ — ^40  men  or  8 
horses, — the  "bucko  special" — was  one  of  the  most  familiar 
jokes  of  the  war  to  the  derisive  Yanks,  who  at  home  had 
ridden  in  accommodations  which  even  peace-time  Europe 
would  regard  as  de  luxe — sleeping  cars  whenever  the  journey 
was  of  twenty-four  hours'  duration  or  longer,  and  in  all  other 
circumstances  comfortable  coaches  or  even,  sometimes,  parlor 
cars. 

America,  during  the  war  period  which  ended  with  the 
armistice,  transported  over  her  rails  nearly  9,000,000  soldiers 


12  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

with  absolutely  no  disorganization  of  regular  service,  and  with 
only  such  curtailment  of  some  of  the  luxuries  of  inland  travel 
as  national  economy  demanded.  On  the  day  when  the  nineteen 
troop  trains  of  the  Seventy-ninth  Division  moved  away  from 
Camp  Meade,  and  right  in  the  midst  of  the  movement,  tiie 
"Congressional  Limited,"  the  crack  passenger  train  between 
Washington  and  New  York,  left  Washington  as  usual  and  on 
schedule.  Perhaps  not  one  of  the  passengers  on  that  train 
realized  that  he  was  going  fifty  or  sixty  miles  an  hour  in  the 
midst  of  an  ocean-bound  division  of  Yankee  troops,  all  travel- 
ing as  comfortably,  as  swiftly,  and  as  safely  as  he. 

And  what  was  happening  on  the  rails  between  Camp  Meade 
and  Hoboken  during  those  two  days  was  being  duplicated  in 
almost  every  section  of  the  country.  The  average  number  of 
troops  transported  by  rail  in  the  United  States  during  the 
month  of  July,  1918,  was  over  35,000  a  day;  so  that  the 
movement  from  Camp  Meade  on  the  heavier  of  the  two  days 
did  not  amount  to  more  than  one-quarter  of  the  total  volume 
of  inland  military  passenger  traffic  on  that  day. 

The  circumstances  which,  at  Tampa,  Colonel  Roosevelt 
ironically  characterized  as  "odd,"  did  not  exist  in  the  trans- 
portation of  American  troops  during  the  recent  war.  If  they 
had  existed.  General  Pershing's  force  of  2,000,000  men  never 
would  have  existed.  In  Tampa,  fewer  soldiers  were  mobilized 
altogether  than  were  transported  from  Camp  Meade  and 
loaded  aboard  ship  in  two  days.  Had  the  oddities  of  Tampa 
been  repeated  at  such  a  port  as  New  York  in  1918,  who  can 
picture  the  indescribable  result,  the  confusion,  the  bitter  dis- 
grace to  America,  the  almost  certain  disaster  to  our  cause? 
Men  were  being  moved  to  France  at  the  rate  of  10,000  a  day — 
more  than  a  division  every  three  days,  more  in  a  week  than 
mobilized  at  Tampa  altogether.  With  the  embarkation  camps 
at  New  York  almost  continuously  packed  with  troops  to 
utmost  capacity,  with  other  tens  of  thousands  always  on  the 
rails  moving  steadily  and  inexorably  toward  the  Port,  and 
with  System  there  in  "the  neck  of  the  bottle"  so  ordering  the 
operation  that  the  ships  snatched  away  their  loads  at  precisely 


A  CONTRAST  13 

the  rate  of  flow  of  the  olive-drab  torrent  to  the  sea,  what 
chaos,  what  an  inextricable  tangle,  had  the  system  faltered! 

But,  as  one  military  bureau*  expressed  its  astonishment, 
"the  almost  unbelievable  facts"  were  true  "that  there  was 
never  any  serious  congestion  at  camp  or  ports,  never  any  seri- 
ous delays  or  accidents  en  route^  and  that  no  troopship  was 
delayed  by  lack  of  troops  or  sailed  without  its  full  capacity  of 
troops,  except  ...  on  account  of  the  influenza  epidemic." 

The  1918  commander  of  overseas  troops  had  no  need  to 
display  that  "individual  initiative"  of  Spanish  War  days,  or 
to  fight  for  his  equipment,  his  railroad  cars,  or  his  transporta- 
tion. Nor  did  he  need  to  fear,  with  M.  Demolins,  whose  book 
occupied  Colonel  Roosevelt  on  the  railway  trip  from  San 
Antonio  to  Tampa,  that  his  individual  faculties  might  become 
atrophied  in  consequence  of  his  being  merely  "a  cog  in  a  vast 
and  perfectly  ordered  machine."  If  he  lost  individuality,  it 
would  not  be  on  that  account.  The  vast  and  perfectly  ordered 
machine  existed  in  1918,  but  the  combatant  officer  was  not 
even  a  cog  in  it.  He  was  merely  a  passenger  transported  by  it. 
The  whole  affair  of  his  travel  from  training  camp  to  debarka- 
tion port  in  France  was  handled  for  him  by  an  expert  organi- 
zation which  attended  to  every  detail  with  intimacy  and 
solicitude  such  as  the  most  timorous  and  inexperienced  of 
Cook's  tourists  never  knew.  The  commander  of  combatant 
troops  received  orders  to  proceed  to  France,  and  thereafter 
his  concern  was  merely  to  maintain  discipline  among  his  men 
during  the  journey.  Otherwise  he  had  little  to  do  but  fold 
his  hands  and  await  arrival  in  France. 

The  transportation  organization  told  him  when  to  move 
and  how  to  prepare  for  the  journey.  When  he  marched  his 
troops  to  the  camp  and  railroad  station,  he  found  the  trains 
ready  for  him.  Transportation  officers  on  the  spot  had  arranged 
that.  Transportation  officers  superintended  the  loading  of  the 
trains.  Transportation  officers  routed  the  trains  across  the 
country,  saw  to  it  that  they  made  their  junction  connections, 

*  Operations  Branch,  Operations  Division,  General  Staff.  Resume  of  Activi- 
ties, July  1,  1918- June  30,  1919. 


14  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

kept  them  up  to  schedule.  Transportation  officers  handled  the 
detraining  at  the  embarkation  camps  at  the  seaboard  and 
assigned  the  troops  to  quarters.  The  troop  commander  was  not 
even  charged  with  the  responsibility  of  seeing  that  his  men 
were  properly  equipped.  Experts  of  the  transportation  organi- 
zation, conversant  with  the  latest  of  the  ever-changing  orders 
and  regulations,  attended  to  this,  confiscating  excess  and 
unauthorized  articles,  issuing  new  if  the  equipment  were  worn 
or  deteriorated,  and  finally  placing  each  man  aboard  the  trans- 
port with  his  outfit  in  good  condition  and  exactly  complete, 
no  more  and  no  less.  Troops  on  the  trip  by  rail  had  to  provide 
their  own  food,  but  the  cooking  facilities,  kitchen  cars  and  the 
like,  were  supplied  by  the  transport  organization.  The  Service 
had  the  last  word  on  what  men  should  go  to  France  and  what 
ones  should  not,  for  the  final  weeding-out  occurred  at  the  Port 
of  Embarkation.  If  the  unit  had — as  it  usually  had — left 
stragglers  behind  at  training  camp  or  elsewhere,  even  the  diffi- 
cult duty  of  bringing  up  these  men,  no  matter  in  what  part  of 
the  country  they  were,  rested  not  on  the  commander,  but  on 
the  broader  shoulders  of  the  transportation  organization,  which 
maintained  a  traveling  military  police  force  for  this  purpose — 
a  huge  business  in  itself. 

A  vast  and  perfectly  ordered  machine !  So  vast  it  was  that 
no  one  mind  could  encompass  its  intricacies,  yet  so  perfectly 
ordered  that  the  smoothness  of  its  performance  must  sometimes 
have  astonished  even  its  creators.  There  was  never  a  mal- 
function of  crucial  importance;  never  a  grave  slip-up.  Its 
capacity  for  handling  men  seemed  to  have  no  limit.  It  deliv- 
ered troops  to  France  so  fast  that  our  own  soldiers  construed 
the  published  figures  of  American  overseas  transportation  as 
exaggerations  meant  to  hearten  the  Allies  and  assail  the  morale 
of  the  enemy.  Not  Germany,  not  France,  not  one  of  even  the 
most  militaristic  nations  of  the  world  had  ever  accomplished 
anything  like  it.  In  a  most  exacting  branch  of  the  profession 
of  war,  peace-loving  America  showed  herself  to  be  not  the 
neophyte,  but  the  master. 


Photo  from  Brown  Bros. 

ROUGH  RIDING  FOR  THE  ROUGH  RIDERS 

(Tampa,  1898) 


Copyright  by   Undertvood  is'   V ndcrzvood,   N.    Y. 

MARINES  ENTRAINING  FOR  EMBARKATION 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD 

A  MERICAN  troops  began  moving  toward  France  with- 
/-%  out  undue  delay  after  the  declaration  of  war.  Having 
^  ^  taken  the  plunge,  America  was  at  once  to  realize  what 
it  involved:  fighting,  our  own  men  facing  the  enemy  in 
Flanders,  engagements,  American  casualty  lists — and  all  of 
this  soon.  We  had  a  Regular  Army — small,  as  forces  had  come 
to  be  regarded;  not  thoroughly  equipped  in  the  ultramodern 
sense ;  but  intrepid,  highly  trained,  and  efficiently  commanded 
by  the  graduates  of  West  Point.  We  had,  moreover,  some  one 
hundred  thousand  National  Guardsmen  still  bronzed  and  hard 
from  service  at  the  Mexican  border — a  force  which  merited 
the  respect  of  any  enemy  because  of  its  recent  training.  The 
first  act  of  Congress  after  adoption  of  the  war  resolution  was 
to  introduce  a  selective  service  bill  which  was  soon  to  result 
in  the  registration  and  mobilization  of  the  entire  manpower 
of  the  greatest  of  republics.  The  land  began  to  roar  with  the 
hammer-blows  of  workmen  building  the  first  thirty-two  train- 
ing camps.  All  other  building  suddenly  ceased,  and  the  rails 
grew  heavy  with  freight — principally  building  materials — for 
the  new  mobilization  cities.  Officers'  training  camps  had 
sprung  up  in  half  a  dozen  centers.  Men  were  beginning  to  dis- 
appear from  offices,  from  factories,  from  college  classrooms. 
The  war  was  upon  us;  its  inexorable  process  of  consumption 
had  begun.  The  great  machine  was  in  motion. 

Almost  at  once  the  Allies  startled  us  with  appeals  for  men. 
We  had  not  known  how  desperate  was  their  plight.  Missions, 
headed  by  men  high  in  the  administration  of  the  struggle 
against  Germany,  began  arriving  in  the  United  States.  The 
scales  fell  from  our  eyes.  If  the  impression  existed  that  we 
could  take  a  year  or  two  for  preparation  and  then  send  a 


i6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

moderate  force  abroad  to  add  the  finishing  touch  to  a  victory 
which  the  Allies  in  themselves  had  the  power  to  achieve,  that 
impression  was  quickly  dispelled.  The  Allies  were  bleeding  to 
death.  Germany  was  winning,  nothing  less.  The  morale  of 
the  French,  who  thus  far  had  successfully  held  the  "frontier 
of  freedom,"  was  running  out  like  water  through  a  sieve. 
There  had  been  mutinies — officers  shot  by  their  men.  Ameri- 
can soldiers  in  France,  not  merely  to  be  to  the  people  of 
Europe  the  visible  token  of  our  moral  support  and  of  the 
material  aid  that  would  come  presently,  but  soldiers  forth- 
with for  the  actual  fighting;  green  soldiers  if  necessary,  to  be 
brigaded  with  the  veteran  troops  of  the  Allies  for  speed  in 
training;  men,  soldiers,  Americans,  in  the  utmost  possible 
numbers,  in  the  quickest  possible  time — such  was  the  desperate 
need.  Without  such  aid,  the  cause  of  civilization  might  go 
under;  it  might,  even  if  the  aid  came. 

Thus,  from  the  start,  a  heavy  responsibility  rested  upon 
the  transportation  organization.  As  it  wrought  for  success  or 
failure,  so  might  the  destiny  of  humanity  turn. 

General  Pershing,  summoned  from  the  Rio  Grande,  set  up 
in  Washington  the  headquarters  of  a  new  element  in  the  world 
struggle,  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  The  Govern- 
ment had  already  secured  the  first  ships  of  its  future  transport 
fleet,  and  these  were  assembling  in  New  York,  which,  for  the 
sake  of  secrecy  in  our  military  movements,  had  lost  its 
metropolitan  identity  in  the  public  press  and  had  become, 
noncommittally,  "an  Atlantic  port."  The  British  ship  Baltic 
slipped  out  of  port,  and  a  few  days  later  the  cable  astonished 
millions  of  Americans  by  announcing  the  arrival  in  England 
of  General  Pershing  and  his  staff.  The  A.  E.  F.  was  a  fact. 
Already  orders  had  been  issued ;  and  the  transportation  organi- 
zation, still  no  more  than  the  embryo  of  what  it  was  shortly 
to  become,  had  begun  to  function.  The  First  Division  was 
beginning  to  assemble  for  the  voyage  across  the  Atlantic. 
America  had  inaugurated  the  offensive. 

General  Pershing,  however,  was  not  the  first  to  wear  the 
American  uniform  in  Europe.  Several  hospital  organizations 


THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD  17 

had  preceded  him,  the  earliest  care  of  the  Government  being 
to  provide  accommodations  and  treatment  for  the  sick  and 
wounded  of  the  forthcoming  expedition.  To  Base  Hospital 
No.  4,  organized  at  Lakeside  Hospital  in  Cleveland,  Ohio, 
under  the  leadership  of  the  eminent  surgeon.  Dr.  George  W. 
Crile,  now^  commissioned  in  the  Medical  Corps,  fell  the  honor 
of  being  the  first  American  military  unit  to  reach  Europe. 
This  organization  sailed  on  May  8,  1917,  on  the  S.  S.  Orduna 
of  the  Cunard  Line.  It  was  composed  of  34  officers,  156 
enlisted  men,  64  nurses,  and  4  civilians,  and  it  carried  a  com- 
plete hospital  equipment.  Landing  in  England,  these  soldiers 
gave  Europe  its  first  glimpse  of  the  American  khaki.  Three 
days  later  the  hospital  organized  at  Harvard  University, 
Cambridge,  and  called  Base  Hospital  No.  5,  sailed  on  the 
Cunarder  Saxonia,  to  be  followed  the  next  day  by  Base 
Hospital  No.  2,  which  had  been  organized  at  the  Presbyterian 
Hospital  in  New  York,  and  which  sailed  on  the  American 
liner  St.  Louis.  On  May  19,  two  other  base  hospitals,  with 
their  equipment,  left  America  for  France :  the  university  unit  of 
St.  Louis,  Missouri,  on  the  S.  S.  St.  Paul.,  American  Line,  and 
now  called  Base  Hospital  No.  10;  and  Base  Hospital  No.  12, 
the  Northwestern  University  unit,  of  Evanston,  Illinois,  on 
the  American  liner  Mongolia. 

General  Pershing  sailed  on  May  28,  nine  days  after  the  last 
of  the  pioneer  five  base  hospitals.  He  went  with  the  under- 
standing that  the  First  Expeditionary  Division  was  to  follow 
him  after  a  brief  interval.  He  was  still  in  Washington  when 
the  first  overseas  orders  to  combat  troops  went  out  in  the  form 
of  a  telegram  from  Colonel  William  M.  Cruikshank,  adjutant 
general,  to  the  commanding  general  of  the  Southern  Depart- 
ment of  the  Army  at  Fort  Sam  Houston,  Texas.  These  orders 
were  as  follows: 

"1.  The  following  organizations  are  designated  for  foreign 
service:  Sixteenth,  Eighteenth,  Twenty-sixth,  Twenty-eighth 
Infantry  Regiments;  headquarters  and  four  motor  truck  com- 
panies, personnel  only;  outpost  company  from  First  Battalion 
Signal   Corps;   Motor  Ambulance  Company  No.   6;   Motor 


i8  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Field  Hospital  No.  6;  two  motor-truck  company  machine 
shops  with  personnel  complete. 

"2.  Use  all  resources  of  your  department  to  organize  infan- 
try regiments  and  equip  them  accordingly.  Fill  up  organiza- 
tions to  strength  prescribed  by  transfer  of  enlisted  men  from 
other  organizations  or  by  recruits.  Wire  requests  for  shortages 
direct  to  bureau  chief  concerned,  who  will  have  shortages  meet 
organization  at  port  of  embarkation.  Commissioned  personnel 
will  be  assigned  by  the  War  Department.  Expedite  organiza- 
tion and  equipment  in  every  way  possible.  Report  by  wire 
when  organizations  are  ready  to  move  by  rail." 

A  day  or  so  later  a  telegram  was  dispatched  to  the  com- 
mander at  Fort  Sam  Houston  directing  that  the  First  Division 
be  organized  and  ready  to  entrain  by  June  i.  This  telegram 
was  signed  by  General  McCain,  the  adjutant  general.  There 
is  another  historic  document  in  the  files  at  Washington  on  the 
letter-head  of  the  A.  E.  F.  Headquarters,  Washington,  D.  C, 
dated  May  24,  requesting  the  adjutant  general  to  substitute 
the  outpost  company  of  the  Second  Field  Signal  Battalion 
for  that  of  the  First  Battalion  named  in  the  original  order. 
This  letter  is  signed  by  General  Pershing. 

On  May  24  General  Pershing  instructed  the  commanding 
general  at  Fort  Sam  Houston  to  order  the  four  infantry  regi- 
ments of  the  First  Division,  the  i6th,  18th,  26th,  and  28th, 
to  take  their  existing  equipment  with  them,  including  their 
Benet-Mercier  machine  guns.  The  rest  of  a  complete  field 
equipment  was  to  meet  the  regiments  at  the  Port  of  Embar- 
kation and  be  loaded  on  ships  constituting  part  of  the  convoy. 
The  system  of  having  troops  carry  along  their  equipment 
wherever  they  went  was  rooted  deep  in  the  traditions  of  the 
American  Army,  though  it  was  to  be  drastically  changed 
before  the  fighting  came  to  an  end. 

Meanwhile,  a  chief  concern  of  the  military  line  organiza- 
tion in  Washington  was  the  tactical  reorganization  of  units 
for  overseas  duty.  The  old  American  regiment  with  its  1,000 
or  1,200  men  and  companies  of  100  members  would  not  fit 
in  with  the  scheme  of  organization  adopted  by  both  the  Brit- 


THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD  19 

ish  and  the  French :  namely,  companies  of  264  men  and  regi- 
ments with  an  approximate  strength  of  2,800  officers  and  men. 
One  of  General  Pershing's  jfirst  duties  in  his  foreign  service 
was  to  study  this  problem  and  to  recommend  a  plan  for  the 
reorganization  of  American  troop  units.  Late  in  May  the  Gov- 
ernment organized  a  mission  of  eleven  army  officers  to  go  to 
France  immediately  and  study  the  many  problems  connected 
with  the  landing  and  establishment  of  a  great  American  force, 
among  these  problems  being  that  of  army  organization.  Mean- 
while, upon  the  arrival  of  French  officers  with  the  mission 
headed  by  M.  Viviani  and  Marshal  Joffre,  the  Army  War 
College,  after  consultation  with  these  experts,  drew  up  a  table 
of  organization  for  an  American  division.  General  Pershing 
approved  this  scheme  of  organization  before  he  sailed  and  re- 
quested that  similar  plans  be  formulated  to  cover  the  organi- 
zation of  army  corps  and  field  armies. 

Washington  decided  to  send,  in  addition,  a  regiment  of 
marines  with  the  first  convoy.  On  May  16  the  Secretary  of 
War  wrote  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  requesting  that  this 
regiment  be  organized  according  to  the  new  specifications,  with 
a  headquarters  company,  three  battalions,  and  an  aggre- 
gate strength  of  2,779  officers  and  men.  It  was  also  requested 
that  replacement  troops  to  the  number  of  1,000  either  accom- 
pany the  marine  regiment  or  follow  it  immediately.  Mean- 
while the  four  infantry  regiments  of  the  First  Division  were 
to  be  brought  up  to  the  newly  authorized  strength  by  transfer 
of  men  from  other  units  and  by  recruiting. 

Major  General  William  L.  Sibert,  later  Chief  of  the  Chem- 
ical Warfare  Service,  was  assigned  by  the  Secretary  of  War 
to  the  command  of  the  First  A.  E.  F.  Division.  General  Sibert 
at  once  went  to  New  York,  set  up  his  headquarters,  began 
collecting  his  personal  staff,  and  made  arrangements  for  the 
loading  of  the  first  convoy.  In  a  telegram  from  General  Sibert 
to  the  War  Department  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  stir  of 
preparation  for  combat  which  animated  the  military  service 
in  these  early  days : 

"Information  received  here  indicates  that  various  bureau 


20  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

chiefs  of  the  War  Department  are  ordering  personnel  and  sup- 
plies to  New  York  for  transportation  within  first  convoy. 
They  cannot  be  accommodated  on  vessels  procured.  Arrange- 
ments have  been  made  for  the  transportation  of  units  itemized 
on  sheet  accompanying  your  letter  May  26,  and  in  addition 
one  field  bakery  company  and  stevedores.  No  room  for  any 
other.  Provisions  made  for  only  one  ambulance  company  and 
no  more  can  be  accommodated,  neither  personnel  nor  equip- 
ment. No  room  for  motor  vehicles,  other  than  those  mentioned 
in  list  referred  to  above.  Cargo  space  available  is  now  over- 
taxed, and  some  portions  will  have  to  be  left  behind  unleSs 
additional  ships  can  be  secured." 

This  telegram  shows  the  eagerness  of  the  various  branches 
of  the  Army  to  place  their  men  and  materials  in  France  at 
the  earliest  possible  date.  This  zeal,  if  it  had  remained  un- 
checked by  central  authority,  might  have  entailed  disaster  to 
the  great  overseas  movement  or,  at  least,  greatly  impaired  its 
momentum;  and  indeed,  before  the  Transportation  Service 
became  completely  organized,  it  did  bring  about  a  serious 
situation.  The  telegram,  with  its  implication  that  the  com- 
mander of  combat  troops  still  had  much  to  do  with  the  trans- 
port of  his  men,  can  also  serve  as  a  basis  for  the  reader's  appre- 
ciation of  the  tremendous  changes  brought  about  later  in  our 
handling  of  troops  and  supplies. 

In  the  latter  part  of  May  the  authorities  were  working  with 
all  speed  to  prepare  the  ships  for  this  first  sailing.  The  Gov- 
ernment had  found  the  vessels  at  or  near  New  York  and  had 
bought  or  chartered  them  to  be  the  beginning  of  what  was 
later  a  mighty  transoceanic  equipment.  The  army  ships  of 
the  first  convoy,  fourteen  in  number,  were  these: 
Havana  Montanan 

Antilles  H.  R.  Mallory 

Dak o tan  Mom  us 

El  Occidente  Y*  as  tores 

Finland  San  Jacinto 

Lenape  Saratoga 

Edward  Luckenbach  Tenadores 


From  The  Tfar  College  Collection 

BORDER  TROOPS  OFF  FOR  FRANCE 


Photo   by   International  Film  Service 


"GOOD-BYE,  BROADWAY 


From    The   Jl'ai    ( 


AN  EARLY  TROOP  TRAIN 


Photo   by    Western  Neivspaper   Union 

SOME  OF  THE  FIRST  TO  GO 


THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD  21 

With  the  single  exception  of  the  Finland,  none  of  these  ves- 
sels had  ever  been  in  the  transatlantic  trade.  They  were  all 
boats  from  the  coastwise  and  Latin-American  trades,  running 
from  New  York  to  the  West  Indies,  to  the  American  and 
Mexican  Gulf  ports,  and  to  Central  America.  The  Fas  tores 
and  Tenadores  had  been  in  the  banana  trade  between  New 
York  and  Caribbean  ports,  as  part  of  the  "Great  White 
Fleet"  of  the  United  Fruit  Company.  The  Mallory  was  in 
coastwise  trade  between  American  Gulf  ports,  Cuba,  and  New 
York.  Most  of  the  ships  were  in  New  York  harbor,  either 
unloading  or  already  unloaded,  when  the  Government  secured 
them.  The  Luckenbach  was  in  Philadelphia  unloading.  She 
steamed  around  to  New  York,  reaching  there  May  30,  the 
\te  also  of  the  arrival  of  the  Saratoga.  The  Momus  reached 
New  York  May  31,  and  the  Finland  came  in  from  her  last 
commercial  voyage  across  the  Atlantic  on  June  1. 

While  these  vessels  were  receiving  alterations  to  make  them 
over  into  troop  transports  and  cargo  and  animal  transports, 
under  the  direction  of  construction  officers  of  the  Army  Trans- 
port Service,  the  New  York  Navy  Yard  was  preparing  gun 
platforms  and  mounts  for  the  decks  and  securing  guns  for  the 
mounts,  so  as  to  give  each  vessel  her  own  defense  against  the 
submarines  which  were  expected  to  dispute  the  passage  of  the 
convoy  across  the  ocean.  The  Finland  alone  was  already  armed, 
fore  and  aft. 

On  the  day  when  war  became  a  legal  fact,  the  Government 
had  seized  the  great  piers  of  the  North  German  Lloyd  Steam- 
ship Company  and  the  Hamburg-American  Line  at  Hoboken, 
New  Jersey,  across  the  North  River  from  Manhattan  Island. 
Here  the  Army  Transport  Service  set  up  headquarters  and 
prepared  for  the  embarkation  of  the  First  Division. 

For  the  benefit  of  the  morale  of  her  civilian  population. 
Great  Britain  invited  us  to  send  part  of  the  First  Expedition- 
ary Division  to  England  to  visit  London  en  route  to  France. 
Military  and  naval  reasons  forbade  us  to  accept  this  ^  ffer  of 
hospitality;  but  the  Government  promised  that  later  bntin- 
gents  should  land  in  England.  This  promise  was  fulfilled  on 


22  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

a  scale  far  greater,  perhaps,  than  either  our  Government  or 
the  Government  of  Great  Britain  expected. 

The  four  infantry  regiments  at  the  Mexican  border  and 
the  other  units  were  equipped  and  ready  for  departure  on 
June  1,  the  date  set  in  the  original  orders  from  Washington. 
The  supply  companies  of  these  regiments,  in  fact,  entrained 
at  their  various  headquarters  in  Texas  on  the  31st  day  of 
May  and  reached  the  New  Jersey  suburbs  of  New  York  on 
June  7.  By  June  1  the  refitting  of  transports  had  progressed 
to  such  a  point  that  the  War  Department  felt  justified  in 
ordering  the  Texas  units  to  entrain  at  once. 

The  most  remote  of  the  four  infantry  regiments,  the  18th, 
left  its  quarters  at  Douglas,  Arizona,  on  June  2.  The  other 
three  regiments,  all  of  which  were  stationed  in  Texas,  en- 
trained on  the  3d,  each  in  six  special  trains.  The  16th  had 
been  patrolling  the  border  at  the  Rio  Grande  crossing  at  El 
Paso.  It  entrained  between  midnight  and  four  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  June  3.  The  26th  entrained  at  its  camp  at  San 
Benito,  Texas,  in  the  late  afternoon  of  June  3.  The  28th 
entrained  at  its  headquarters  in  McAllen,  Texas,  on  the 
same  afternoon.  The  first  section  of  the  train  movement  of 
the  28th  started  at  3.20  p.m.,  and  the  last  left  McAllen  at 
8.40  that  evening,  the  others  getting  off  at  regular  intervals 
between  those  times.  The  entraining  of  the  other  regiments 
was  conducted  on  a  similar  schedule  and  with  equal  precision. 

The  16th  traveled  via  Fort  Worth,  St.  Louis,  and  Buffalo, 
three  sections  arriving  at  Hoboken  on  June  9  and  three  on 
June  10,  the  entire  regiment  having  made  the  trip  from  the 
Mexican  border  within  seven  days.  And  these  troops  carried 
all  their  equipment  on  the  journey  by  rail — a  fact  which 
means  that  freight  cars  were  coupled  to  the  passenger  trains, 
with  a  consequent  slowing  down  of  the  running  time.  The  18th 
went  via  Chicago,  reaching  Hoboken  on  June  9  after  a  jour- 
ney of  seven  days.  The  quickest  trip  of  all  was  made  by  the 
26th,  which,  routed  through  St.  Louis,  began  arriving  in 
Hoboken  on  June  7  after  four  days  of  travel.  The  last  two 
sections  carrying  the  26th  reached  Hoboken  on  the  morning 


THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD  23 

of  the  8th.  The  28th  Infantry  arrived  in  Hoboken  on  June 
8  and  9,  via  Atlanta  and  Washington,  D.  C.  All  four  regiments 
were  at  the  Port  of  Embarkation  by  June  10. 

Meanwhile  the  other  units  assigned  to  the  First  Division 
had  been  traveling  to  Hoboken.  Base  Hospital  No.  18  had 
been  ordered  to  mobilize  at  AUentown,  Pennsylvania,  for  de- 
parture with  the  first  convoy.  This  hospital  was  the  creation 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University  at  Baltimore.  AUentown  is  but 
a  few  hours'  run  from  New  York,  so  that  the  hospital  unit 
could  entrain  there,  travel  to  New  York,  and  embark  on  a 
transport,  all  within  one  day.  Two  battalions  of  engineers 
assigned  to  the  division  left  San  Antonio  in  three  sections  on 
June  2,  arriving  at  Hoboken  June  9,  The  field  hospital  and 
ambulance  company  designated  for  the  division  occupied  one 
train,  which  left  San  Antonio  June  3  and  arrived  at  Hoboken 
June  9.  The  Signal  Corps  outpost  company's  train  left  Browns- 
ville on  the  3d  and  arrived  at  Hoboken  on  the  9th.  A  detach- 
ment of  quartermaster  troops  had  also  come  through  from 
Texas  on  a  special  train. 

The  embarkation  of  all  these  troops  from  the  piers  in  the 
North  River — piers  recently  German,  by  the  way — was  not 
so  rapid  as  the  execution  of  similar  tasks  later  on.  Approxi- 
mately 12,000  troops  sailed  in  the  first  convoy.  They  spent 
four  days  getting  their  baggage  and  themselves  aboard  ship. 
Hoboken  was  to  see  45,000  American  soldiers  embark  on 
transports  within  twenty-four  hours. 

The  troopships  of  the  convoy  started  June  14,  1917.  The 
16th  Infantry  occupied  two  transports — six  companies  and  the 
regimental  headquarters  on  the  Havana^  six  companies  and  the 
supply  company  on  the  Saratoga.  The  18th  crossed  on  the 
Finland  and  the  Mallory^  six  companies  to  each  ship,  with 
the  headquarters  on  the  Finland  and  the  supply  company  on 
the  Mallory.  These  assignments  used  up  the  larger  ships,  so 
that  the  26th  Infantry  and  the  28th  Infantry  each  had  to 
utilize  three  vessels.  The  26th  traveled  on  the  San  Jacinto.,  the 
Lenape,  and  the  Momus.,  one  battalion  of  four  companies  on 
each  vessel.  The  headquarters  of  the  26th  was  set  up  on  the 


24  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Sa?i  Jacinto;  the  regiment's  supply  company  found  accom- 
modations on  the  Lenape.  The  three  ships  assigned  to  the  28th 
were  the  Antilles^  Fastores^  and  Tenadores.  This  regiment, 
also,  embarked  with  its  three  battalions  intact,  one  on  board 
each  of  the  three  ships.  Regimental  headquarters  traveled  on 
the  Antilles  and  the  supply  company  was  assigned  to  the 
Pastores.  General  Sibert,  his  staff,  and  the  headquarters  of 
the  First  Division  were  on  the  Lenape^  sharing  the  vessel  with 
troops  of  the  26th  Infantry.  The  quartermaster  troops  were 
carried  on  the  Pastores.  The  ambulance  company  and  the  field 
hospital  embarked  on  the  San  Jacinto.  The  four  motor  truck 
companies,  personnel  only,  had  quarters  on  the  Finland.  The 
Signal  Corps  outpost  company  was  on  the  Mallory.,  and  500 
military  stevedores  were  carried  on  the  Momus  and  the 
Tenadores. 

Thus,  of  the  fourteen  vessels  in  the  first  American  convoy, 
ten  carried  troops — the  Antilles^  Finland^  Lenape,  Mallory, 
San  Jacinto,  Saratoga,  Momus,  Pastores,  Tenadores,  and 
Havana.  The  other  four  vessels,  the  Dakotan,  El  Occidente, 
Edward  Luckenbach,  and  Montanan,  carried  cargo  and  ani- 
mals for  the  First  Division.  This  last  group  sailed  June  17. 

We  must  not  forget  the  regiment  of  marines  which  crossed 
the  ocean  with  the  infantry  of  the  First  Division.  The  Navy, 
which  protected  the  first  convoy  and  had  charge  of  it  through- 
out the  voyage,  carried  the  marines  aboard  its  own  ships.  The 
Navy  already  possessed  the  naval  transports  Henderson  (new) 
and  Hancock,  and  had  also  seized  the  German  auxiliary 
cruiser  Printz  Eitel  Friedrich,  which  had  been  interned  in 
Philadelphia.  This  vessel  was  a  passenger  ship;  and,  since  she 
had  escaped  the  damage  inflicted  by  the  German  crews  upon 
the  machinery  of  nearly  all  the  German  vessels  sheltered  in 
our  ports,  she  was  ready  for  immediate  service  as  a  naval  trans- 
port. The  Navy  renamed  this  vessel  the  De  Kalb.  On  these 
three  ships,  the  Henderson,  Hancock,  and  De  Kalb,  attached 
to  the  first  convoy,  the  1st  Regiment  of  Marines  started  on 
the  road  to  France. 

Such  was  the  distribution  of  the  first  combat  troops  of  the 


THE  START  OF  THE  VANGUARD  25 

A.  E.  F.  as  they  set  out  from  America  on  that  memorable  June 
day — a  gallant  muster,  destined  to  write  its  record  imperish- 
ably  into  the  history  of  the  world.  The  orderly  line  of  trans- 
ports, some  in  sober  gray,  others  bedizened  like  harlequins  in 
the  fantastic  patterns  of  the  new  camouflage,  pass  through  the 
opened  gate  in  the  recently  placed  submarine  net  across  the 
Narrows;  through,  and  on  into  the  obscuring  fog  of  a  spring 
morning.  There  we  wave  our  farewells  to  them  for  the  present, 
reserving,  however,  a  place  later  in  the  narrative  for  the 
thrilling  story  of  their  unforgettable  voyage  across  the  Atlantic. 

Even  before  the  first  convoy  sailed,  the  War  Department 
was  preparing  for  the  departure  of  other  overseas  troop  units 
which  should  make  the  First  Expeditionary  Division  complete 
and  place  in  France  the  skeleton  of  the  Second  Division.  In 
the  first  convoy  sailed  only  the  infantry  and  a  few  miscel- 
laneous units  of  the  First  Division.  It  was  necessary  to  add  to 
the  First  its  artillery,  its  engineering  force,  and  other  neces- 
sary sections.  No  time  was  lost  in  preparing  these  organiza- 
tions for  foreign  duty.  As  yet,  our  transport  fleet  consisted 
solely  of  the  fourteen  vessels  of  the  first  convoy.  It  was  the 
plan  to  have  the  other  units  of  the  First  Division  at  the  docks 
in  New  York  awaiting  the  return  of  the  transports.  At  first 
the  authorities  thought  that  the  ships  could  be  ready  to  sail 
on  the  second  voyage  from  America  by  July  1 5,  and  this  date 
was  tentatively  fixed  for  the  mobilization  of  more  troops  at 
the  Port.  But  the  arrival  of  so  many  vessels  at  one  time  seri- 
ously congested  St.  Nazaire,  our  first  port  of  debarkation  in 
France;  and  the  500  stevedores  carried  across  on  the  first 
convoy  were  far  too  few  to  handle  the  work  of  unloading  in 
quick  time.  July  15  came  and  went,  and  still  the  transports 
had  not  returned  from  France. 

By  July  4  the  War  Department  had  designated  the  troops 
which  were  to  sail  in  the  second  convoy.  The  artillery  for  the 
First  Division  included  the  5th  Regiment,  then  stationed  at 
Fort  Bliss,  Texas,  the  6th,  quartered  at  Douglas,  Arizona,  and 
the  7th,  at  Fort  Sam  Houston,  Texas.  A  trench-mortar  battery 
for  the  Division  was  being  organized  hastily  at  Fort  Dupont, 


26  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Delaware.  These  three  regiments  of  Field  Artillery  were  to 
comprise  a  brigade,  the  headquarters  of  which  was  to  be  organ- 
ized at  once  in  readiness  for  sailing.  The  ist  Regiment  of 
Engineers  received  orders  to  join  the  First  Division  in  France. 
Its  companies  were  located  at  various  points  in  Texas,  except 
one  company,  stationed  partly  in  New  York  and  partly  in 
Washington,  D.  C.  The  regiment  assembled  in  Washington 
and  moved  thence  to  Hoboken.  The  2d  Field  Battalion  of 
the  Signal  Corps,  at  Brownsville,  Texas,  which  had  sent  its 
outpost  company  with  the  first  convoy,  was  ordered  to  sail 
on  the  second  convoy.  A  battalion  of  telegraph  operators  for 
the  A.  E.  F.  was  recruited  and  organized  at  Monmouth  Park, 
New  Jersey.  The  Southern  Department  of  the  Army  was 
ordered  to  organize  the  horse-drawn  section  of  the  ammuni- 
tion train  for  the  First  Division,  and  the  Eastern  Department 
the  motor-drawn  section.  Meanwhile  the  War  Department  was 
getting  together  a  headquarters  train  with  a  company  of  mili- 
tary police  for  the  First  Division.  The  First  Aero  Squadron 
and  three  base  hospitals  also  found  ship  space,  as  did  six  rail- 
way engineer  regiments.  In  all,  the  troops  embarking  on  the 
second  convoy  numbered  274  officers  and  7,337  men.  They 
carried  with  them  797  vehicles  of  all  sorts,  including  wagons, 
rolling  kitchens,  artillery  caissons,  motor  trucks,  automobiles, 
and  motorcycles. 

The  second  convoy  crossed  early  in  August.  It  sailed  in  two 
escorted  groups  of  ships.  The  first  group,  which  left  on  July 
31,  1917,  included  four  of  the  troop  transports  which  had  been 
members  of  the  first  convoy :  the  Pas  tores,  Tenadores,  Mallory, 
and  Saratoga.  The  tanker  Arethusa  also  sailed  in  this  group, 
carrying  fuel  to  the  naval  forces  abroad.  Six  days  later  sailed 
the  second  group,  composed  of  the  Finland,  Antilles,  and  San 
Jacinto,  with  the  navy  transport  Henderson.  This  departure 
ended  the  embarkation  at  New  York  until  September,  when 
there  began  the  unbroken  flow  of  American  soldiers  to  France 
which  was  to  end  only  with  the  armistice. 


CHAPTER  III 

MOBILIZING  REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD 

ALTHOUGH,  from  a  popular  standpoint,  the  chief 
/-%  interest  in  these  early  weeks  of  the  war  attaches  to 
^  m-  the  inland  travel  and  overseas  embarkation  of  the 
First  Division  and  other  pioneer  units  of  the  American  Expe- 
ditionary Forces,  this  phase  of  military  movement  constituted 
by  no  means  the  major  part  of  the  work  then  being  conducted 
by  the  organization  which  was  handling  transportation.  Mili- 
tary transportation  on  a  war-time  scale  began  almost  as  soon 
as  war  was  declared. 

For  months  the  United  States  had  been  teeming  with  agents 
of  the  German  Government,  who  operated  with  the  weapons 
of  the  Vandal  against  American  factories  turning  out  muni- 
tions of  war  for  the  Allied  armies  and  against  American  rail- 
roads transporting  these  supplies.  There  was  no  reason  to 
believe  that  these  hirelings  would  not  continue  their  depreda- 
tions after  America  became  a  belligerent,  when  the  oppor- 
tunity for  outrages  was  vastly  greater.  There  were  hundreds 
of  railroad  bridges,  the  destruction  of  any  one  of  which  would 
seriously  cripple  railroad  transportation  at  an  hour  when  it 
was  imperative  that  every  mile  of  trackage  be  used  to  its 
capacity.  For  the  protection  of  these  structures  and  of  impor- 
tant industrial  plants,  the  Government  turned  out  the  Na- 
tional Guard.  One  of  the  first  duties  of  the  transportation 
service  was  to  convey  large  numbers  of  state  militiamen  to 
the  important  bridges,  tunnels,  and  industrial  plants  which 
needed  protection.  This  movement,  however,  was  not  large 
enough  to  be  considered  at  this  point  as  one  of  the  distinctive 
phases  of  military  travel  during  the  war.  Of  these  greater 
drifts  or  tides  that  characterized  different  periods  of  army 


28  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

transportation,  there  are  five  which  should  have  immediate 
mention : 

( 1 )  The  movement  of  the  old  units  of  the  Regular  Army 
to  increment  camps ; 

(2)  The  movement  of  the  National  Guard  organizations 
to  their  training  camps; 

(3)  The  movement  of  drafted  troops  from  their  homes  to 
their  cantonments; 

(4)  The  intercamp  movement  of  National  Army  troops; 
and 

(5)  The  movement  of  all  to  the  seaboard  for  embarkation. 
Only  roughly  speaking  were  these  currents  consecutive  in 
point  of  time.  They  always  overlapped.  And  for  a  long  span 
the  last  three  processes  occurred  simultaneously — that  is,  dur- 
ing the  last  ten  months  of  military  expansion  new  drafts  were 
continually  called  to  the  cantonments,  intercamp  travel  con- 
tinued as  these  new  levies  were  sorted  and  distributed,  and  in 
the  same  period  the  stream  of  troops  flowing  to  the  ports 
reached  flood- tide  and  stayed  there. 

Yet  one  or  another  of  these  types  of  movement  dominated 
the  traffic  at  different  periods.  With  reasonable  accuracy  we 
can  define  the  limits  of  these  periods  as  follows: 

(1)  Regulars  to  increment  camps — late  spring  of  1917; 

(2)  National  Guard  to  training  camps — early  autumn  of 
1917; 

(3)  Drafted  men  to  cantonments — mid-autumn  of  1917; 

(4)  Intercamp  travel — late  fall  and  winter  of  1917-1918; 
and 

(5)  Movement  to  ports — March-October,  1918. 

This  classification,  of  course,  does  not  include  the  tremen- 
dous volume  of  rail  travel  incident  to  demobilization  after 
November  11,  1918.  Nor  does  it  embrace  such  miscellaneous, 
but  heavy,  items  as  the  gathering  of  volunteer  recruits  from 
the  enlistment  centers;  the  carrying  of  candidates  and  officer 
graduates  to  and  from  the  various  officers'  training  camps; 
the  transport  of  troops  to  depots,  arsenals,  dangerous  war 
factories,  army  posts,  hospitals,  and  other  stations  not  on  the 


Photo   copyright   by  International  Film   Service 


A  BRIDGE  PATROL 


Photo  by  International  Film  Service 

CHICAGO  GUARDSMEN  OUT  FOR  WAR  SERVICE 


Photo   copyright   by  Iniernaticnal  Fihn   Service 

NATIONAL  GUARDSMEN  OF  NEW  YORK 
LEAVING  FOR  CAMP 


From   The  War  College  Collection 

NEWARK  (N.  J.)  FAREWELL  TO  NATIONAL  GUARD 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  29 

direct  route  between  the  citizen  soldiers'  homes  and  the 
A.  E.  F.  in  France;  the  tremendous  furlough  travel  that 
weighted  the  rails  during  the  Thanksgiving  and  Christmas 
holidays;  or  any  of  a  dozen  other  elements  that  enormously 
added  to  the  traffic  burden  and  complicated  its  problem. 

Finally,  this  classification  does  not  include  (nor  is  any  of 
the  discussion  in  these  pages  concerned  with)  the  travel  of 
individual  soldiers  or  small  groups  of  them.  These  isolated 
travelers  arranged  for  their  own  trips  and  rode  on  the  regular 
trains,  the  railroads  handling  them  as  commercial  passengers. 
They  presented  transportation  orders  to  the  ticket  offices  and 
received  their  tickets,  and  the  military  disbursing  office  later 
paid  the  cost  of  their  transportation.  On  furlough  or  leave, 
military  passengers  rode  for  one  cent  a  mile  and  paid  it  from 
their  own  pockets.  That  this  travel  was  heavy,  anyone  who 
rode  on  the  trains  in  1918  can  testify.  The  transportation 
organization  of  the  Army,  however,  assumed  jurisdiction  of 
the  travel  of  soldiery  only  in  groups  of  fifty  or  more,  a  party 
large  enough  to  require  at  least  one  special  car.  The  traffic 
figures  presented  in  this  account  embrace  nothing  but  officially 
managed  travel,  and  do  not  include  the  casual  travel  of 
individuals. 

The  declaration  of  war  was  attended  by  a  tremendous  wave 
of  patriotic  enthusiasm,  and  men  hurried  by  thousands  to 
recruiting  offices  to  join  Uncle  Sam's  fighting  forces.  Whether 
from  a  desire  to  get  at  the  Germans  as  soon  as  possible,  or  in 
order  to  escape  the  fancied  stigma  of  being  drafted  for  service, 
young  Americans  flocked  to  the  recruiting  offices  in  numbers 
never  known  before.  They  were  taken  into  the  military  service 
in  such  numbers  that  it  required  special  trains  to  haul  them 
from  the  principal  cities  to  various  depots  and  barracks.  In 
the  five  months  after  the  declaration  of  war,  and  before  the 
first  selective  service  men  moved  to  their  cantonments,  the 
transportation  organization  handled  125  special  trains  loaded 
with  33,277  of  these  recruits.  This  figure  does  not  include  the 
tens  of  thousands  of  volunteers  from  the  smaller  communities 
who  traveled  on  regular  trains  to  points  of  mobilization. 


30  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

It  devolved  upon  the  transportation  organization  to  move 
many  of  the  old  organizations  of  the  Regular  Army  from  sta- 
tions along  the  Mexican  border  to  camps  in  the  East  and 
South  where  they  could  receive  these  recruits  and  build  up 
their  own  ranks  to  the  strength  authorized  in  the  new  scheme 
of  army  organization.  This  movement  required  many  special 
trains;  it  was  a  difficult  problem  for  the  transportation  organi- 
zation, which  was  still  relatively  inexperienced.  There  were 
several  of  these  Regular  Army  increment  camps — one  at 
Syracuse,  New  York,  another  at  Westfield,  Massachusetts,  a 
third  at  Gettysburg,  Pennsylvania,  and  a  fourth  at  Chicka- 
mauga,  Tennessee.  In  the  West  and  Southwest  the  army  forts 
served  as  increment  camps. 

Some  instances  of  military  travel  in  this  period  will  indi- 
cate the  nature  of  the  movement.  The  4th  Infantry  Regiment 
of  the  Regular  Army  left  Brownsville,  Texas,  on  five  special 
trains  on  May  28  and  arrived  at  Gettysburg  on  June  2.  On 
May  28  the  7th  Infantry  entrained  in  four  sections  at  El 
Paso,  bound  for  Gettysburg,  and  arrived  there  June  4.  On 
May  18  five  sections  started  from  San  Antonio  bearing  the 
9th  Infantry  to  Syracuse,  and  reached  their  destination  May 
23.  Chickamauga  began  receiving  regular  troops  in  late  May, 
nine  sections  arriving  between  May  24  and  28,  with  the  6th 
Infantry  from  El  Paso  and  the  11th  from  Douglas,  Arizona. 
The  23d  Infantry  arrived  in  Syracuse  on  June  27  on  four 
sections,  having  left  El  Paso  June  19.  The  30th  Infantry  left 
Eagle  Pass,  Texas,  on  May  19  on  four  special  trains  and 
arrived  in  Syracuse  on  May  25.  Seven  special  trains,  depart- 
ing at  intervals  during  three  days  in  late  May,  bore  the  11th 
Cavalry  from  Fort  Bliss  to  Chickamauga.  The  13th  Cavalry 
moved  in  six  sections  from  Fort  Bliss  to  Fort  Riley;  the  3d 
Field  Artillery  traveled  from  points  in  Texas  to  Fort  Myer 
in  four  sections;  and  the  4th  Field  Artillery  went  to  Syracuse 
on  three  special  trains — all  three  of  these  last-named  move- 
ments taking  place  in  May. 

Between  May  1  and  August  1  the  movements  of  the  Regu- 
lar Army  in  the  United  States,   including  the  embarkation 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  31 

movement  of  the  infantry  units  of  the  First  Division,  required 
the  operation  of  110  special  trains,  usually  over  long  routes. 
The  total  number  of  troops  carried  on  these  trains  was  36,765. 

Among  other  troop  movements  in  this  period  may  be  men- 
tioned the  dispatch  of  10,243  officers  and  enlisted  men,  most 
of  them  volunteers  for  aviation,  to  various  aviation  fields  in 
the  United  States  and  Canada,  thirty-three  special  trains  being 
operated  for  this  one  purpose  in  these  early  weeks.  The  recruit- 
ing, mobilization,  and  transferring  of  ambulance,  hospital, 
sanitary,  and  medical  companies  before  August  required  the 
operation  of  sixty- four  special  trains  for  12,903  passengers. 
In  this  period  the  mobilization  of  engineer  units  required 
twenty-two  special  trains  for  11,059  passengers.  An  interest- 
ing phase  of  early  transportation  history  was  the  movement 
of  casual  officers,  most  of  them  graduates  of  the  first  officers' 
training  camps.  Thirty  special  trains,  carrying  5,519  officer 
passengers,  took  part  in  this  movement. 

In  all,  the  miscellaneous  railway  travel  of  troops,  even 
before  the  transportation  problem  had  become  at  all  serious 
in  its  proportions,  entailed  the  movement  of  448  special  trains 
with  138,482  passengers.  This  whole  series  of  operations  pro- 
ceeded without  the  slightest  disturbance  to  normal  passenger 
train  schedules.  The  public  scarcely  realized  that  troop  travel 
had  begun,  so  notably  absent  was  the  confusion  which  might 
have  advertised  the  activity.  Yet  the  number  of  men  trans- 
ported was  comparable  to  the  total  force  which  received 
transportation  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish-American  War. 

Even  so,  the  military  passenger  list  of  this  period  was  negli- 
gible in  comparison  to  the  number  of  men  that  cascaded  upon 
the  transportation  organization  in  August.  In  April,  1917,  the 
National  Guard  had  numbered  approximately  150,000  men. 
By  the  middle  of  August,  recruiting  had  added  nearly  200,000 
men  to  its  rolls,  so  that  its  total  strength  was  then  above 
340,000.  The  movement  of  this  force  to  its  training  camps 
constituted  the  second  great  phase  of  inland  passenger  trans- 
portation during  the  war. 

Sixteen   training  camps  were  provided   for   the   National 


32  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Guard,  nearly  all  of  them  in  the  South.  This  centralization 
of  the  camps  in  a  single  territorial  section  had  an  important 
bearing  on  the  transportation  problem,  for  it  necessitated 
much  longer  hauls  of  troops  than  if  the  camps  had  been  located 
in  the  centers  of  sixteen  districts  comprising  the  whole  United 
States.  The  exigencies  of  the  war  program  required  that  the 
Guard  camps  be  set  up  in  a  mild  climate.  Winter  was  coming 
on.  It  was  a  certainty  that  not  all  of  the  National  Guard 
divisions  could  be  taken  to  France  before  the  northern  weather 
grew  cold.  Moreover,  once  the  National  Guard  divisions  had 
evacuated  their  training  camps,  there  might  be  no  other  troops 
to  take  their  places  there.  This  dilemma  was  not  to  arrive  in 
connection  with  the  National  Army  divisions.  The  drafted 
men  for  the  National  Army  were  to  be  called  out  for  training 
in  continual  increments,  perhaps  up  to  the  whole  sum  of 
American  manpower.  Therefore,  the  National  Army  canton- 
ments were  of  stanch,  permanent  construction,  and  were 
located  according  to  the  geographical  distribution  of  popula- 
tion, regardless  of  climate.  The  National  Guard  camps  were 
of  but  temporary  construction — for  the  most  part  canvas 
tentage.  To  have  placed  these  in  the  North  would  have  put 
unnecessary  hardship  upon  those  who  had  to  winter  in  them. 

The  southern  location  of  the  National  Guard  camps,  then, 
placed  upon  the  railroad  system  of  the  United  States  the 
heaviest  military  burden  it  had  known  up  to  that  time.  It 
required  the  transportation  of  great  bodies  of  soldiers  over 
great  distances.  Troops  from  Minnesota  on  the  Canadian 
border  went  to  Camp  Cody  at  Deming,  New  Mexico,  on  the 
Mexican  border.  Militia  traveled  from  Washington  and  Ore- 
gon to  Camp  Greene  at  Charlotte,  North  Carolina.  The  whole 
Guard  movement  called  into  being  a  complicated  mesh  of 
train  schedules  to  bring  the  regiments  together  at  mobilization 
points  within  their  respective  states  and  to  carry  them  to  their 
southern  camps. 

If  military  transportation  were  to  break  down  at  all,  the 
disaster  might  have  been  expected  at  this  time,  when  the 
National  Guard,  with  its  third  of  a  million  men,  put  the  first 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  33 

of  a  series  of  military  peak  loads  on  American  tracks.  Yet 
the  system  never  faltered.  The  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of 
special  trains,  bearing  their  khaki-clad  loads,  went  through 
to  their  destinations  in  almost  as  quick  time  as  could  have 
been  made  by  regular  trains  carrying  private  travelers.  The 
Guardsmen  were  still  moving  in  great  numbers  when  the  first 
increment  of  the  draft  added  its  tens  of  thousands  of  men  to 
the  transportation  load.  These,  too,  were  cared  for  by  an 
organization  now  becoming  exceedingly  expert  in  its  business. 

American  civilians  were  traveling  in  unprecedented  num- 
bers; the  men  in  uniform  were  speeding  along  American  rails 
in  an  ever-increasing  flood ;  and  those  same  rails  were  weighted 
to  capacity  with  millions  of  tons  of  war  freight — building 
materials  for  the  training  camps,  raw  materials  for  the  thou- 
sands of  industrial  plants  even  then  starting  work  on  their 
war  contracts,  thousands  of  cars  rolling  toward  the  seaboard 
to  bear  to  the  Allies  a  volume  of  munitions  which  never  for  an 
instant  dwindled  by  reason  of  America's  entry  into  the  war. 
At  this  juncture,  in  the  fall  of  1917,  we  see  American  trans- 
portation genius  managing  with  supreme  success  a  volume  of 
traffic  beyond  the  ability  and  equipment  of  any  other  nation. 

The  movement  of  the  National  Guard  to  its  training  camps 
was  practically  completed  between  August  15  and  October 
15,  1917.  It  involved  the  operation  of  920  special  trains 
loaded  with  294,752  passengers.  Approximately  50,000  Na- 
tional Guardsmen  resided  so  near  the  training  camps  that  they 
rode  to  them  on  regular  trains  or  made  their  own  way  to  camp 
without  government  transportation.  An  equivalent  of  this 
movement  would  be  the  travel  of  a  single  train  over  710,309 
miles  of  track,  a  mileage  sufficient  to  take  the  single  train 
nearly  three  times  over  the  entire  railroad  system  of  the  United 
States.  Or,  stated  in  another  way,  it  was  approximately  the 
travel-equivalent  of  three  troop  trains  operated  over  every 
short-line  and  trunk-line  railroad  in  America.  The  Guard,  in 
all,  required  rolling  stock  in  such  enormous  quantities  as  3,208 
tourist  cars,  3,941  parlor  chair  cars,  619  coaches,  1,211  bag- 
gage cars,  2,282  box  cars,  1,097  ^^^  cars,  478  gondolas,  and 


34  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

948  stock  cars.  The  National  Guard  occupied  on  the  first  stage 
of  the  road  to  France  a  total  of  13,802  cars. 

New  York  placed  aboard  the  trains  a  heavier  human  lading 
than  any  other  state.  New  York's  37,787  National  Guards- 
men occupied  97  special  trains.  The  Ohio  National  Guard  was 
second  in  strength,  with  24,065  men,  occupying  76  special 
trains,  bound  for  Dixie.  Illinois  sent  19,844  National  Guards- 
men to  the  training  camps  on  50  specials.  The  Pennsyl- 
vania Guard,  16,704  in  strength,  used  83  special  trains. 
Wisconsin  dispatched  47  specials ;  Missouri,  36. 

In  an  appendix*  to  this  volume  is  a  tabular  analysis  of 
the  primary  travel  performed  by  the  National  Guard,  show- 
ing the  number  of  men  transported  from  each  state,  the  num- 
ber of  special  trains  occupied,  the  period  during  which  each 
state  was  sending  its  militia  to  camp,  the  destination  of  each 
movement,  and  the  divisions  of  the  American  Army  in  which 
these  units  finally  found  place. 

Although,  in  general,  the  National  Guard  troops  traveled 
directly  to  the  South  to  camps  in  which  they  were  organized 
and  trained  in  divisions,  and  from  which  they  ultimately  de- 
parted for  the  seaboard  and  the  ships,  there  were  exceptions 
to  the  rule.  The  National  Guard  of  all  the  New  England 
States,  for  example,  assembled  at  Camp  Devens,  the  new 
National  Army  cantonment  at  Ayer,  Massachusetts,  and  there 
combined  with  the  New  England  Coast  Artillery  to  form  the 
Twenty-sixth  Division,  its  ranks  being  filled  out  by  a  slight 
addition  of  drafted  men.  The  Twenty-sixth  was  known  as  the 
"New  England  Division."  Almost  immediately  after  its  or- 
ganization it  began  moving  to  the  Port  of  Embarkation  to 
cross  the  ocean  and  receive  the  greater  part  of  its  training 
abroad.  By  the  1st  of  November  the  entire  division  had  landed 
in  France,  surrendering  Camp  Devens  to  the  Seventy-sixth 
Division  of  the  National  Army,  made  up  of  drafted  troops 
from  New  England  and  New  York  State. 

The  Twenty-sixth  Division  and  the  Forty-second  (the 
famous  "Rainbow  Division")  shared  the  honor  of  being  the 

*  Appendix  A. 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  35 

first  National  Guard  divisions  to  arrive  as  units  in  France. 
They  immediately  followed  the  First  and  Second  Regular 
Army  Divisions  into  the  organization  of  the  A.  E.  F.  The 
"New  England"  Division  was  the  second  to  go  into  the 
trenches  and  one  of  the  first  four  or  five  to  begin  active  combat 
operations  against  the  enemy.  The  assembling  of  this  organi- 
zation in  the  heart  of  a  small  and  heavily  populated  district 
put  only  a  slight  strain  upon  the  transportation  facilities. 

The  Forty-second,  the  "Rainbow  Division,"  was  the  only 
other  National  Guard  division  which  did  not  train  in  the 
South.  It  assembled  and  organized  at  Camps  Upton  and  Mills 
on  Long  Island,  near  New  York  City.  Camp  Mills,  twenty 
miles  by  rail  from  the  ferries  on  the  East  River,  was  originally 
set  up  for  the  accomm^odation  of  the  Forty-second  Division, 
and  was  therefore,  like  the  other  National  Guard  camps,  of 
temporary  construction.  Soon,  however,  it  became  evident  that 
Camp  Merritt,  in  the  northern  New  Jersey  suburbs  of  New 
York  on  the  Hudson  Palisades,  and  designated  as  the  rest 
camp  for  France-bound  troops  awaiting  transport  space  at 
the  port  of  New  York,  would  be  inadequate,  large  and  well 
equipped  as  it  was,  to  handle  the  flood  of  men  which  must 
pass  through  the  Port.  The  result  was  that,  after  the  "Rain- 
bow Division"  had  left  Camp  Mills  for  France  and  the  evacu- 
ation of  the  camp  was  complete.  Camp  Mills  was  rebuilt  with 
permanent  barracks  and  added  to  Camp  Merritt  as  part  of  the 
permanent  facilities  of  the  Port  of  Embarkation.  Camp  Mills 
began  to  be  used  as  an  embarkation  camp  early  in  1918,  and 
thereafter  its  capacity  of  40,000  visiting  troops  was  filled  and 
refilled  times  without  number. 

The  assembling  of  the  Forty-second  Division  was  a  con- 
siderable task,  for  the  division  was  made  up  of  National 
Guard  troops  from  twenty-seven  states  of  the  Union,  with 
a  considerable  dilution  of  drafted  men.  Alabama  furnished 
the  largest  contingent,  and  New  York  the  next  largest,  fol- 
lowed closely  by  Iowa,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Minnesota,  and  Illi- 
nois, in  the  order  named.  The  concentration  of  these  and  the 
other  units  on  Long  Island,  during  the  period  of  greatest  travel 


36  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

by  the  National  Guard,  meant  that  every  day  there  were  a 
few  National  Guard  special  trains  moving  eastward  across 
the  southerly  current  of  travel  which  was  the  dominant  char- 
acteristic of  military  transportation  in  September,   1917. 

Sentiment  played  a  part  in  the  composition  of  the  Forty- 
first,  known  as  the  "Sunset  Division";  and  in  that  fact  lies 
the  explanation  of  one  apparent  inefficiency  in  planning  the 
primary  movement  of  the  National  Guard.  As  the  training 
system  was  first  formulated,  it  was  proposed  to  assemble  one 
National  Guard  division  at  Camp  Greene,  near  Charlotte, 
North  Carolina.  The  plan  was  to  build  this  division  of  Na- 
tional Guardsmen  out  of  the  northwestern  tier  of  states  from 
North  Dakota  to  Washington.  The  plan  was  carried  to  the 
point  of  dispatching  a  great  number  of  special  troop  trains 
across  the  continent  to  Charlotte  from  points  as  far  west  as 
Puget  Sound.  Idaho  sent  four  such  trains,  Montana  two, 
North  Dakota  eight  specials,  Oregon  twelve;  Guardsmen  of 
South  Dakota  occupied  five  special  trains  in  this  movement, 
those  of  Wyoming  four;  and  six  specials  carried  more  than 
2,000  Guardsmen  from  Washington  on  the  Pacific  coast  to 
North  Carolina  on  the  Atlantic.  Each  of  the  trains  from 
Washington  and  Oregon  was  on  the  rails  for  more  than  a 
week.  Yet  scarcely  had  these  troops  been  set  down  in  the  new 
camp  in  North  Carolina  when  there  arose  a  popular  demand 
in  the  Northwest  for  an  entire  National  Guard  division  to  be 
made  up  of  units  from  the  Northwestern  States.  The  War 
Department  deferred  to  this  expression  of  public  opinion  by 
establishing  at  Camp  Fremont,  near  San  Francisco,  the  Forty- 
first  Division,  composed  of  National  Guard  troops.  Among 
the  states  represented  in  this  division  were  Oregon,  Washing- 
ton, Idaho,  Montana,  North  Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Wyo- 
ming, Colorado,  and  New  Mexico.  To  assemble  the  division 
involved,  of  course,  the  return  to  the  Pacific  coast  of  troops 
that  had  already  crossed  the  continent.  And  some  of  the  north- 
western troops  originally  sent  to  Camp  Greene  went  to  points 
other  than  Camp  Fremont.  Several  organizations  joined  the 
"Rainbow  Division"  at  Camp  Mills.  Certain  of  the  North 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  37 

Dakota  and  South  Dakota  units  were  transferred  to  Camp 
Cody,  at  Deming,  New  Mexico,  there  to  become  part  of  the 
Thirty-fourth  Division,  made  up  principally  of  Guard  troops 
from  the  upper  Mississippi  valley.  After  the  northwestern 
troops  had  evacuated  Camp  Greene,  the  establishment  became 
an  increment  camp  for  the  Third  and  Fourth  Divisions  of 
Regulars.  The  Third  occupied  the  camp  from  late  November 
to  late  March,  the  Fourth  from  mid-December  to  mid-May. 

Two  states,  New  Mexico  and  Nevada,  had  no  National 
Guard  organizations.  Four  states.  New  York,  Pennsylvania, 
Ohio,  and  Illinois,  each  sent  nearly  enough  National  Guard 
troops  to  make  up  a  division.  The  all-New  York  Division  was 
called  the  Twenty-seventh.  It  trained  at  Camp  Wadsworth,  at 
Spartanburg,  North  Carolina.  Every  National  Guard  division 
received  a  greater  or  smaller  infusion  of  National  Army  troops 
to  bring  it  up  to  the  authorized  strength  before  sailing  for 
France.  The  Pennsylvania  Division,  known  as  the  Twenty- 
eighth,  which  trained  at  Camp  Hancock,  at  Augusta,  Georgia, 
came  the  nearest  of  any  of  the  seventeen  National  Guard  divi- 
sions to  being  composed  entirely  of  National  Guard  troops; 
it  had  only  a  few  National  Army  men  in  its  organization.  The 
Illinois  Division,  the  Thirty-third,  which  trained  at  Camp 
Logan,  near  Houston,  Texas,  received  nearly  half  its  strength 
from  the  National  Army.  The  Ohio  National  Guard  con- 
tributed slightly  more  than  three-quarters  of  the  roster  of 
the  Thirty-seventh  Division,  the  remainder  being  National 
Army  troops.  The  Thirty-seventh  Division  trained  at  Camp 
Sheridan,  near  Montgomery,  Alabama. 

In  the  spring  and  summer  of  1917,  then,  the  National 
Guard,  at  its  various  camps  and  armories  throughout  the  coun- 
try, received  volunteer  increments,  until  about  200,000  new 
soldiers  had  been  added  to  the  ranks.  The  militia  trained  at 
the  Mexican  border  numbered  only  about  110,000  men.  This 
trained  force  was  to  be  simply  the  skeletal  nucleus  of  the  great 
new  volunteer  army  of  Guardsmen,  By  the  middle  of  August 
the  southern  training  camps  were  ready  to  receive  their  first 
units,  and  the  Guard  began  moving  southward.  Some  states 


38  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

sent  out  trains  as  early  as  August  1 1 ;  the  heaviest  movement 
occurred  in  September.  During  the  middle  two  weeks  of  Sep- 
tember, practically  all  the  states  were  dispatching  troops.  The 
first  trainload  of  National  Guard  troops  from  New  York 
started  for  Camp  Wadsworth  on  August  29.  Thereafter  the 
New  York  movement  was  rapid — three  special  trains  on 
August  30,  three  on  September  6,  three  on  the  7th,  one  on  the 
8th,  four  on  the  1  ith,  four  on  the  14th,  and  five  on  the  15th. 
After  a  quiet  interval  of  eight  days,  during  which  there  was 
no  National  Guard  travel  from  New  York,  eight  special 
trains  of  New  York  Guardsmen  departed  for  camp  on  Septem- 
ber 24,  eight  more  on  the  25th,  one  on  the  27th,  five  on  the 
29th,  six  on  the  30th,  and  four  on  October  1.  Another  inter- 
val, and  three  more  trains  started  October  6,  one  on  October  8, 
eight  on  October  9,  five  on  October  1 1,  and  three  on  October 
12,  which  completed  the  movement. 

Throughout  this  period  there  was  a  considerable  employ- 
ment of  special  trains  for  concentrating  the  various  New  York 
National  Guard  units  at  suitable  entraining  points  within  the 
state.  When  distances  were  short,  heavy  trains  were  the  rule. 
The  entire  69th  New  York  Infantry  Regiment,  1,716  men, 
rode  from  New  York  City  to  Camp  Mills,  Long  Island,  on  a 
single  train,  made  up  of  thirty-three  chair  cars,  one  baggage 
car,  and  eight  kitchen  cars — a  total  of  forty-two. 

The  dispatch  of  Ohio  National  Guard  Troops  was  another 
big  job  in  transportation.  The  4th  Infantry  Regiment  of  the 
Ohio  National  Guard,  nearly  4,000  men,  became  part  of  the 
"Rainbow  Division."  Having  gathered  at  Camp  Perry,  Ohio, 
this  regiment  started  for  Camp  Mills  on  September  7  on  eight 
special  trains.  The  movement  to  the  Ohio  camp  at  Mont- 
gomery, Alabama,  began  on  August  23.  The  10th  Infantry 
Regiment  of  the  Ohio  Guard,  consisting  of  volunteers  from 
northeastern  Ohio,  left  Youngstown  on  three  special  trains 
September  16.  The  5th  Infantry  left  Cleveland  and  other 
northern  Ohio  points  on  six  sections  September  25  and  27. 
The  6th  Ohio  Infantry  left  Cleveland  and  Toledo  on  three 
special  trains  September  27.  The  8th  Infantry  entrained  on 


?i'ri  wi  r 


Photo  from  American  Red  Cross 

TRAVELING  CANTEEN 


Photo  by  Felix  J.  Koch 


PUBLIC  FAREWELL  TO  CINCINNATI  NATIONAL 
GUARD  REGIMENT 


REGULARS  AND  NATIONAL  GUARD  39 

four  specials  September  29.  The  next  day  the  2d  Infantry 
left  northwestern  Ohio  cities  on  three  sections.  The  3d  Infan- 
try, which  had  concentrated  at  Camp  Sherman  at  Chillicothe, 
embarked  on  five  special  trains  October  8  and  9.  Five  other 
trains  on  October  9  bore  the  1st  Ohio  Infantry  from 
Cincinnati. 

The  movement  of  Pennsylvania  National  Guard  troops  to 
Camp  Hancock,  Augusta,  Georgia,  was  so  expeditious  as  to 
merit  a  detailed  analysis.  The  Pennsylvania  Guard  began 
moving  southward  August  17,  and  by  September  15  the  entire 
division  was  in  camp.  Except  for  a  few  scattered  units,  the 
whole  force  of  17,000  men  was  transported  from  Pennsyl- 
vania to  Georgia  within  eight  days. 

The  heavy  movement  began  on  September  7,  when  nine 
special  trains  departed  for  the  South,  including  four  sections 
which  carried  the  10th  Infantry  Regiment  from  Pittsburg. 
The  next  day,  September  8,  the  16th  Infantry  left  Meadville 
and  Erie  on  six  trains;  the  18th  Infantry  started  from  Pitts- 
burg on  five  sections;  and  the  3d  Infantry  entrained  at  West 
Pittston  on  three  sections — fourteen  National  Guard  trains,  all 
running  as  specials,  originating  in  Pennsylvania  on  that  one 
day.  Eleven  of  these  trains  discharged  their  passengers  at 
Augusta  on  September  10,  two  days  later,  and  the  other  three 
early  in  the  morning  of  September  11.  On  September  10, 
twelve  sections  left  Pennsylvania  points  for  the  South  with 
various  other  units  of  the  National  Guard,  including  the  13th 
Infantry  from  Scran  ton,  which  traveled  on  five  trains.  The 
1st  Infantry  left  Philadelphia  on  September  1 1  in  four  sec- 
tions. Seven  special  trains  left  the  state  on  the  1 1  th,  six  on  the 
12th,  and  four  on  the  13th,  ending  the  movement.  In  seven 
<lays,  September  7-13,  fifty-two  of  the  eighty-three  sections 
used  in  the  movement  of  Pennsylvania  state  troops  to  the 
training  camp  had  been  loaded  and  dispatched. 

These  trains  fairly  deluged  their  passengers  upon  Camp 
Hancock.  On  September  10  fifteen  trains  unloaded  at  the 
camp.  The  next  day  there  were  five  more.  On  the  12th  there 
were  ten  arrivals.  September  14  was  another  big  day  at  Camp 


40  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Hancock,  fifteen  special  trains  arriving  and  discharging  their 
loads.  The  first  arrivals  occurred  at  dawn,  the  last  after  night- 
fall; and  some  of  the  specials  pulled  into  camp  at  fifteen- 
minute  intervals. 

This  whole  movement  of  the  National  Guard  to  its  camps — 
the  transportation  of  more  than  a  third  of  a  million  men — 
went  through  with  the  most  gratifying  expedition  and  smooth- 
ness. Largely  because  of  this  celerity  in  transportation,  the 
National  Guard  divisions  were  ready  when,  in  1918,  the 
desperate  call  for  troops  came.  Every  one  of  the  seventeen 
National  Guard  divisions,  at  least  in  part,  reached  France. 
By  the  late  spring  of  1918,  most  of  the  National  Guard 
camps  in  the  South  were  tenantless. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  TROOP-MOVEMENT  OFFICE 

UP  to  the  end  of  the  year  1917,  over  half  a  million 
American  troops  had  traveled  in  organized  units  upon 
American  railroads.  Their  travel  had  involved  the 
operation  of  nearly  1,500  special  trains.  These  figures,  large 
as  they  then  seemed,  and  soon  to  be  doubled  in  the  inland 
military  traffic  of  a  single  month,  do  not  take  into  account 
the  movement  of  several  hundred  thousand  selective  service 
troops  inducted  into  the  Army  in  the  autumn  of  1917. 

The  movement  of  a  special  train  calls  for  a  vastly  greater 
amount  of  detail-work  on  the  part  of  a  railroad  organization 
than  is  required  for  the  operation  of  a  regular  train.  The 
regular  train  has  a  fixed  schedule,  and  it  is  handled  as  a 
matter  of  routine  and  familiar  rule,  both  in  the  railroad  office 
and  on  the  tracks.  The  special  is  what  its  name  implies — spe- 
cially assembled,  routed,  and  scheduled,  with  every  employee 
concerned  acting  under  special  instructions.  It  is  entirely  out- 
side the  traffic  routine,  and  the  work  involved  is  all  added 
work.  The  operation  of  1,500  such  trains  constitutes  a 
prodigious  transportation  problem.  No  other  country,  no  coun- 
try with  a  railroad  system  of  smaller  extent  and  equipment 
than  ours,  or  with  railroad  operatives  of  slighter  skill  and 
experience,  could  have  handled  this  additional  burden  of 
traffic  without  disruption  of  the  regular  passenger  and  freight 
schedules.  Not  only  "business  as  usual"  was  the  rule  on  Amer- 
ican railroads  in  1917,  but  business  much  greater  than  usual. 
In  the  transportation  of  passengers  the  American  railroads  met 
every  commercial  demand  put  upon  them  by  the  exigencies 
of  war,  and  in  addition  handled  the  great  volume  of  purely 
military  traffic.  So  far  as  the  movement  of  troops  was  con- 
cerned, they  did  it  rather  easily,  especially  in  1917. 


42  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

It  was  evident  that  we  could  be  no  stronger  in  France  than 
our  transportation  system  at  home  permitted  us  to  be.  Presi- 
dent Wilson,  in  the  most  historic  of  his  war  papers,  the  mes- 
sage to  Congress  in  which  he  declared  that  America  was  enter- 
ing the  war  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy,  called  upon 
the  men  who  run  the  railways  of  the  country  to  see  to  it  "that 
those  arteries  suffer  no  obstruction  of  any  kind,  no  inefficiency 
or  slackened  power."  A  few  weeks  later,  in  Washington,  the 
victor  of  the  Mame,  Marshal  Joffre,  turning  to  a  group  of 
American  railway  officials,  exclaimed  dramatically :  "This  is  a 
railway  war!  The  battle  of  the  Mame  was  won  by  the  rail- 
ways in  France  I"  By  the  end  of  1917  it  had  become  evident 
that  American  transportation  was  equal  to  the  great  task. 

What  had  brought  about  the  change  *?  Why  were  the  rail- 
roads of  1898,  highly  organized  even  then,  as  they  were, 
unable  to  transport,  except  with  great  confusion,  delay,  and 
inefficiency,  the  mere  handful  of  men  mobilized  in  the  war 
against  Spain;  whereas  in  1917  those  same  roads,  weighted 
with  a  regular  traffic  several  times  as  heavy,  could  transport 
one  of  the  largest  armies  ever  organized  over  far  greater  dis- 
tances, and  that  without  friction  or  "obstruction"  of  the 
"arteries"^  The  secret  lay  in  organization,  or  rather  in  a  dif- 
ference of  organization.  In  1898,  the  military  and  railroad 
organization  in  charge  of  troop  travel  was  decentralized;  in 
1917,  it  was  centralized  and  supreme.  In  1898,  military  traffic 
was  handled  by  district  quartermasters  who  left  it  largely 
to  the  enterprise  of  the  commanders  of  the  troops  to  secure 
railroad  facilities  for  themselves;  in  1917,  transportation  was 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  a  central  military  traffic  organization 
in  Washington.  In  1898,  the  railroads  were  split  up  into  their 
independent  units;  competing  lines  bid  for  troop-movement 
contracts;  the  troops  moved  along  the  rail  systems  which  had 
underbid  their  competitors ;  and  the  dispatchers  of  trains  knew 
nothing  of  conditions  at  the  terminals.  In  1917,  this  method 
had  been  entirely  abandoned;  and,  so  far  as  the  transporta- 
tion of  troops  was  concerned,  all  the  railroads  of  the  United 
States  were  operated  as  a  single  system  administered  through 


THE  TROOP-MOVEMENT  OFFICE  43 

an  organization  formed  by  the  railroads  themselves  in  Wash- 
ington— a  volunteer  organization  with  the  power  (and  the 
ability)  to  direct  every  mile  of  troop  travel  from  point  of 
origin  to  destination,  coordinating  the  entire  troop  transpor- 
tation service  as  a  master  dispatcher  might  organize  the  pas- 
senger service  of  any  one  great  railroad  system. 

To  the  troop-movement  office  of  the  American  Railway 
Association  and  to  the  brilliant  traffic  executive  at  the  head 
of  it,  the  late  Mr.  George  Hodges,  belongs  a  large  share  of 
the  credit  for  the  unbroken  and  unimpeded  movement  of  the 
great  army  in  1917  and  1918  to  and  between  its  training 
camps  and  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  Mr.  Hodges  was  virtu- 
ally unknown  to  the  American  public  and  even  to  the  millions 
of  troops  who  rode  under  his  control,  but  no  man  was  better 
known  to  the  operating  railroad  men  of  the  United  States 
during  the  war.  He  was  the  field  commander  of  inland  military 
passenger  transportation.  The  organization  which  he  built  up 
functioned  with  such  precision  that  it  was  taken  over  bodily 
by  the  United  States  Railroad  Administration  when  that  body 
assumed  operation  of  the  American  railroads  in  early  1918, 
and  its  functions  and  personnel  were  then  left  intact.  Indeed, 
so  admirable  was  the  work  of  this  civilian  office  that  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service  of  the  Army,  instead  of  attempting  to 
build  up  a  complete  troop-movement  section  of  its  own,  con- 
tented itself  with  acting  as  the  liaison  agency,  merely  forward- 
ing the  commands  of  the  executive  head  of  the  Army  to  the 
troop-movement  office  of  the  railroads,  certain  that  those 
commands  would  be  carried  out  on  time  and  to  the  letter. 

The  time-honored  system  of  letting  troop-transportation 
contracts  to  the  railroads  which  submitted  the  lowest  bids  was 
not  abruptly  changed  to  meet  the  situation  of  1917.  Even 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  war  in  Europe  the  American  War 
Department  had  taken  first  steps  toward  the  consolidation  of 
American  railroad  lines  to  meet  a  military  emergency.  As  early 
as  May,  1914,  the  Quartermaster  General  of  the  Army  had 
written  to  the  American  Railway  Association  suggesting  that 
the  association  maintain  officers  in  Washington  to  consult  with 


44  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  military  authorities  on  problems  of  transporting  troops 
and  supplies.  After  a  conference  the  A.  R.  A.  designated  a 
representative  to  cooperate  with  the  Army  in  all  matters  of 
transportation  except  routing,  which  was  still  to  be  left  to  the 
competition  of  the  various  railroads.  At  that  time  the  dis- 
turbances in  Mexico  had  created  a  situation  which  might  at  any 
time  have  culminated  in  war.  Within  a  few  weeks  this  original 
arrangement  had  assumed  graver  importance :  war  had  broken 
out  in  Europe,  and  it  was  soon  seen  to  be  a  war  which  might 
engulf  the  whole  civilized  world.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
struggle  in  Europe,  then,  we  had  in  the  United  States  at  least 
the  nucleus  of  an  organization  capable  of  welding  all  the 
railroads  of  America  into  a  great  strategic  unit. 

A  year  later  the  Lusitania  had  been  sunk,  and  America  had 
been  drawn  perilously  near  to  the  great  conflagration  in 
Europe.  On  the  suggestion  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  the  rail- 
roads of  the  United  States  established  in  Washington,  in 
August,  1915,  a  special  committee  on  cooperation  with  the 
military  authorities.  Mr.  Fairfax  Harrison,  the  president  of 
the  Southern  Railway,  was  the  chairman  of  this  committee, 
and  the  other  members  were  Mr.  R.  H.  Aishton,  now  the 
president  of  the  Chicago  &  Northwestern  Railroad,  Mr.  W.  G. 
Besler,  president  of  the  Central  Railroad  of  New  Jersey,  and 
Mr.  A.  W.  Thompson,  vice-president  of  the  Baltimore  & 
Ohio.  The  conferences  with  this  committee  lasted  nearly  a 
year,  and  a  scheme  of  railway  unification  for  military  purposes 
had  been  well  developed  when,  on  June  18,  1916,  the  state 
militia  of  the  United  States  was  ordered  to  mobilize  on  the 
Mexican  border. 

Here  was  made  the  first  use  of  the  plans  drawn  up  in  Wash- 
ington. In  the  border  mobilization  in  1916  the  operating 
branch  of  the  A.  R.  A.  committee  in  Washington  received 
the  invaluable  experience  which  enabled  it,  a  year  later,  to 
function  with  such  precision  and  ease.  Mr.  Hodges,  at  Wash- 
ington, took  executive  charge  of  troop  transportation.  The 
dispatch  of  trains  from  various  points  in  the  United  States 
to  the  Mexican  boundary  was  entirely  in  his  hands.  He  started 


THE  TROOP-MOVEMENT  OFFICE  45 

trains  for  the  Southwest  according  to  the  rate  at  which  the 
terminals  could  receive  them,  thus  preventing  congestion  at 
the  ends  of  routes.  He  arranged  facilities  and  connections  so 
as  to  avoid  delays,  once  a  train  had  started.  In  all,  111,919 
troops  of  the  National  Guard  assembled  at  the  border.  The 
whole  undertaking  was  handled  so  skillfully  as  to  earn  special 
commendation  from  the  Adjutant  General  of  the  Army  in  his 
annual  report  for  1916. 

We  do  not  need  to  follow  the  intricate  development  of  the 
American  Railway  Association's  representation  in  Washing- 
ton. As  war  with  Germany  drew  nearer  and  finally  became  a 
fact,  the  original  committee  of  four  railroad  executives  ex- 
panded, undergoing  several  changes  of  name,  until,  in  the 
spring  of  1917,  it  possessed  thirty-three  members.  It  had  an 
executive  committee,  unofficially  known  as  the  "Railroad  War 
Board,"  composed  of  well-known  railroad  officials,  and  a 
smaller  committee,  which  was  known  as  the  "general  com- 
mittee," though  it  might  more  accurately  have  been  termed 
the  "operating  committee."  This  body  consisted  of  Messrs. 
Fairfax  Harrison,  chairman;  George  Hodges,  assistant  chair- 
man, and  J.  E.  Fairbanks,  secretary.  Mr.  Hodges  was  the 
member  in  charge  of  actual  operations.  The  organization 
which  he  constructed  was  called  "the  troop-movement  office 
of  the  Railway  War  Board."* 

Meanwhile  the  Government  had  taken  a  long  stride  toward 
greater  efficiency  by  abolishing  the  transportation  contract. 
The  National  Guard  and  other  troops  had  moved  to  the 
Mexican  border  under  the  old  plan,  some  of  the  evils  of  which, 
however,  had  been  largely  offset  by  intelligently  centralized 
control  of  the  dispatching  and  arrival  of  trains.  While  the 
troops  were  still  concentrated  along  the  Mexican  line,  nego- 
tiations between  the  Quartermaster  General  of  the  Army  and 
the  representatives  of  the  various  passenger  traffic  committees 
resulted,  on  January  1,  1917,  in  an  agreement  whereby  the 

*  It  should  be  understood  that  this  arrangement  was  concerned  only  with 
the  transportation  of  troops.  Military  freight  traffic  was  handled  in  quite 
another  way. 


46  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

railroads  undertook  to  transport  troops  on  order  from  the 
Government  on  a  fixed  tariff  of  fares.  This  agreement  did 
away  with  the  contract  system.  It  enabled  the  Government — 
and  hence  the  troop-movement  office  of  the  A.  R.  A.,  acting 
as  the  Government's  agent — to  use  any  railroad  line  or  route 
in  the  United  States  the  instant  an  emergency  demanded  such 
use,  with  no  more  waiting  for  bids  to  be  submitted  and  con- 
tracts awarded.  The  military  authorities  could  now  prepare 
for  actual  travel  as  soon  as  any  organization  was  ordered  to 
move. 

This  agreement  enormously  facilitated  the  equitable  com- 
mon use  of  rolling  stock.  It  virtually  pooled  all  the  transpor- 
tation facilities  and  put  them  into  the  hands  of  the  central 
operating  organization,  which  was  charged  with  the  duty  of 
dividing  the  traffic  fairly  among  all  railroad  lines.  That  divi- 
sion, as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  bound  to  occur  anyhow,  for,  in 
the  event  of  heavy  military  traffic,  it  would  become  necessary 
to  use  all  lines  in  order  to  accommodate  the  entire  volume  of 
traffic  and  avoid  congestion  on  the  main-traveled  routes. 

When  war  was  declared,  Mr.  Hodges  built  up  an  organi- 
zation to  handle  the  technical  details  of  the  operating  com- 
mittee's job.  In  the  Washington  office  he  established  three 
departments.  One  selected  the  routes  for  troop  trains.  Another, 
the  transportation  section,  arranged  for  the  actual  movement 
of  trains  over  the  railroads  involved,  fixing  the  dates  for  the 
departure  and  passage  of  special  trains  and  keeping  in  touch 
with  all  the  necessary  physical  elements  of  transportation. 
This  section  also  kept  the  record  of  troop  movements.  The 
third  department  was  known  as  the  Pullman  section.  Estab- 
lished originally  by  the  Pullman  Company  as  part  of  the 
troop-movement  office,  it  had  direction  of  the  entire  Ameri- 
can equipment  of  tourist  cars  and  apportioned  them  as  they 
were  needed.  Later,  after  the  whole  organization  had  become 
a  branch  of  the  United  States  Railroad  Administration,  the 
Pullman  section  assumed  control  of  all  military  passenger  train 
equipment  in  the  United  States — coaches,  baggage  cars  and 


Photo   by   International  Film  Service 

INSIDE  A  TROOP  COACH 


Photo   by   Paul    Thompson 


"GOOD-BYE,  BOYS;  GET  THE  KAISER!' 


Photo   by    C.  J.  Fennel 

A  NEBRASKA  TOWN  SAYS  FAREWELL 


l-iom    The   War   ColUyt   tolU.tiou 


NEW  ENGLAND  CROWDS  WATCH  THE 
TROOP  TRAINS  PASS 


THE  TROOP-MOVEMENT  OFFICE  47 

express  cars,  kitchen  cars,  and  also  parlor  chair  cars  and  tourist 
sleepers. 

This  simple  organization  maintained  contact  with  the  War 
Department  through  the  Department's  Inland  Traffic  Service. 
The  direction  of  troop  movements  w^as,  of  course,  a  military 
matter.  The  orders  came  from  the  Army.  The  details  were 
left  to  Mr.  Hodges  and  his  troop-movement  office. 

Besides  its  headquarters  in  Washington,  the  troop-move- 
ment office  maintained  a  field  service  covering  the  United 
States.  It  established  a  general  transportation  agent  at  each 
of  the  six  department  headquarters  of  the  Army.  Next,  agents 
were  placed  at  the  increment  camps  of  the  Regular  Army,  after 
that  at  the  National  Army  cantonments  and  National  Guard 
camps,  and  finally  at  all  embarkation  camps,  ports,  and  spe- 
cial camps  at  which  considerable  numbers  of  men  were  en- 
trained and  detrained.  These  agents  carried  out  the  orders 
of  the  central  organization  in  Washington.  It  was  the  specific 
function  of  the  camp  agents  to  see  to  it  that  sufficient  railroad 
equipment  arrived  in  time  for  prospective  departures,  that  the 
equipment  was  in  good  order,  that  the  troops  were  properly 
loaded  aboard  the  trains,  and  that  the  specials  were  dispatched 
promptly.  These  camp  agents  worked  out  a  scientific  system 
of  loading  troops,  and  they  supervised  the  entraining  when- 
ever it  occurred,  day  or  night.  The  general  departmental  agents 
kept  in  touch  with  the  various  railroads,  took  charge  of  trains 
at  junctions,  and  made  sure  that  they  were  delivered  expedi- 
tiously from  one  railroad  system  to  another  and  that  the 
arrangements  were  adequate  for  the  prompt  passage  of  troop 
trains  across  their  particular  districts.  As  it  has  been  expressed, 
the  duties  of  the  field  service  were  "to  translate  into  terms  of 
action  the  orders  and  necessities  of  the  Army." 

The  general  agents  at  the  camps  and  other  points  were  127 
in  number,  each  with  an  office  and  the  necessary  clerical  force. 
Each  railroad  in  the  United  States  designated  one  of  its  gen- 
eral officers,  usually  a  vice-president,  to  direct  the  movement 
of  troop  trains  on  its  lines  and  to  cooperate  with  the  railroad 
traffic   agent  at  the   army   department  headquarters.   These 


48  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

officers — there  were  204  of  them — thus  became  virtually  mem- 
bers of  the  troop-movement  office,  and  helped  further  con- 
solidate the  American  railroads  into  an  operating  unit. 

With  this  organization  the  most  extraordinary  feats  of  mili- 
tary transportation  were  carried  out  with  precision  and  cer- 
tainty. In  all,  the  troop-movement  office  handled  upwards  of 
15,000,000  soldiers  on  special  trains. 

The  man  who  built  up  this  organization  had  spent  his  life 
almost  from  boyhood  in  railroading.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
Baltimore  clergyman.  In  1886,  after  an  education  received  in 
New  Hampshire,  he  entered  the  service  of  the  Erie  Railroad. 
In  his  career  of  thirty-one  years  as  a  railroad  man  he  held 
responsible  positions  with  such  roads  as  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio 
and  the  Seaboard  Air  Line.  In  1910  he  became  a  general  repre- 
sentative of  the  railroads  in  various  capacities  connected  with 
traffic  and  its  relation  to  legislation,  and  in  other  public  con- 
tacts. He  died  suddenly  in  Washington  on  March  14,  1919. 
By  direction  of  the  President,  the  Distinguished  Service  Medal 
was  posthumously  awarded  to  Mr.  Hodges  "for  specially  meri- 
torious and  conspicuous  service  as  manager  of  the  troop-move- 
ment section  of  the  division  of  operation  of  the  United  States 
Railroad  Administration.  Mr.  Hodges  arranged  all  the  details 
of  the  movement  of  troops  from  local  draft  boards  to  mobili- 
zation camps,  between  camps,  or  from  mobilization  camps  to 
the  ports  of  embarkation  for  shipment  overseas.  Troops  in 
large  numbers  were  moved  on  short  notice,  and  he  was  respon- 
sible for  the  successful  coordination  and  carrying  out  of  these 
movements."* 

In  the  chain  of  organization  leading  back  to  the  source  of 
authority,  next  behind  the  troop-movement  section  (which 
was  the  railroads'  own  organization)  lay  the  Inland  Traffic 
Service  of  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic.  The 
Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  was  a  branch  of  the 
General  Staff  of  the  Army.  The  formation  of  P.  S.  &  T. 

*  After  the  death  of  Mr.  Hodges,  his  place  was  taken  by  Mr.  C.  F.  Stewart, 
who  successfully  directed  the  tremendous  volume  of  troop-passenger  traffic 
incident  to  the  demobilization  of  the  Army  in  this  country  and  the  return  of 
the  A.  E.  F.  from  France. 


THE  TROOP-MOVEiMENT  OFFICE  49 

was  made  imperative  by  the  immensity  of  the  war  in  which 
America  was  engaged.  The  division  not  only  embraced  the 
functions  of  the  former  Quartermaster  Department,  but  it 
also  appropriated  almost  every  purchasing  activity  of  the  en- 
tire Army.  It  bought  for  the  military  service  nearly  everything 
from  shoe  strings  to  locomotives.  It  stored  and  distributed 
these  supplies,  and,  as  its  name  implies,  it  also  transported 
them.  It  transported  all  troops  as  well.  The  Inland  Traffic 
Service  was  the  P.  S.  &  T.  Division's  branch  and  agency  for 
conducting  the  movement  of  troops  and  supplies  upon  the 
rails  of  the  United  States.  Another  branch  of  the  P.  S.  &  T. 
Division  was  called  the  Embarkation  Service.  It  handled  the 
troops  at  the  ports,  and  also  directed  the  operation  of  the 
army  transports.  Eventually  both  these  organizations,  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service  and  the  Embarkation  Service,  merged 
into  a  single  unit  known  as  the  Transportation  Service,  in 
which  all  the  traffic  functions  of  the  Division  of  Purchase, 
Storage,  and  Traffic  came  together  under  a  single  executive. 

The  Inland  Traffic  Service  maintained  an  extensive  organi- 
zation for  handling  the  army  freight  traffic.  The  railroads 
themselves  failing  to  unify  military  freight  transportation, 
the  Army  took  this  problem  into  its  own  hands.  The  army 
troop-travel  section,  however,  was  simple,  thanks  to  the  ex- 
traordinary efficiency  of  the  railroads'  own  organization. 

Behind  the  troop  section  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service,  along 
the  route  through  which  authority  over  transportation  must 
pass,  lay  still  another  organization:  the  Operations  Division, 
also  of  the  General  Staff.  The  Operations  Division  was  the 
direct  agency  of  the  Chief  of  Staif,  who,  in  respect  to  the 
movement  of  men  and  supplies,  was  the  contact  point  between 
the  Army  and  its  civilian  control.  When,  out  of  the  confer- 
ences of  the  President  and  his  advisers,  emerged  policies,  these 
policies,  in  so  far  as  they  related  to  the  assembling  and  trans- 
portation of  the  Army,  were  transmitted  by  the  Chief  of 
Staff  to  his  Operations  Division,  which  body  of  experts  trans- 
lated the  policies  into  general  terms  of  action. 

The  Operations  Division  built  the  military  programs.  It 


50  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

determined  the  number  of  divisions  to  be  organized  and  the 
number  of  troops  to  be  recruited,  organized,  and  trained.  It 
decided  what  numbers  of  men  were  to  be  called  into  the  mili- 
tary service  through  the  draft  and  what  classes  of  men  were 
to  be  called  at  each  induction.  It  directed  when  the  men  were 
to  be  drafted,  where  they  were  to  be  sent,  where  assigned  after- 
ward. It  called  into  being  and  organized  all  new  units.  It 
determined  which  units  should  be  shipped  overseas;  it  estab- 
lished the  priorities  in  troop  shipments.  This  office  was  one 
of  the  most  vital  branches  of  the  war  organization;  for  to  it 
the  Provost  Marshal  General,  who  had  charge  of  the  drafts, 
turned  for  the  authority  on  which  he  based  his  plans.  So, 
too,  all  of  the  supply  bureaus  of  the  War  Department  were 
dependent  upon  the  Operations  Division  for  information 
without  which  they  could  not  prepare  intelligently  for  the 
future.  Almost  every  act  of  this  division  resulted  ultimately 
in  military^  transportation.  With  the  transportation  organiza- 
tion the  Operations  Division  maintained  intimate  relations. 

The  sum  of  these  facts  reveals  to  us  in  its  entirety  the 
process  of  building  and  transporting  a  mighty  army.  That 
process  is  like  the  passage  of  an  ingot  through  a  steel  mill. 
From  the  alembic  of  the  high  councils  comes  the  molten 
metal — policies,  fluid  as  yet,  indeterminate  outlines,  round 
numbers.  These  go  to  the  Operations  Division  and  emerge 
hardened  and  welded  into  programs  with  definiteness  in  num- 
bers and  balance  in  proportions — so  many  combatant  troops 
to  be  formed  and  trained,  so  many  for  replacement,  so  many  for 
the  Services  of  Supply.  The  assembling  and  the  ultimate  move- 
ment of  this  force  toward  France  mean  transportation.  Orders 
go  to  the  Inland  Traffic  Service;  dates  and  places  are  fixed. 
We  have  progressed  far  from  the  general  toward  the  concrete 
and  specific.  Finally,  authority  is  relayed  to  the  troop-move- 
ment office,  and  at  last  the  grand  strategy  of  the  Government 
has  become  action,  equipment,  schedules,  connections,  rails 
vibrant  with  ten  thousand  wheels,  thundering  trains,  windows 
crowded  with  cheering  soldiers — the  fruition  of  the  nation's 
military  plans. 


CHAPTER  V 
HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES 

IT  has  been  necessary  to  tell  something  about  the  organ- 
ization in  charge  of  American  troop  travel  in  the  war, 
for  the  reason  that  we  come  now  to  a  subject  which 
cannot  be  made  clear  until  the  reader  understands  the  system 
which  moved  our  soldiers  in  inland  transportation.  The  men 
called  to  the  colors  by  the  Selective  Service  Law  occupied,  so 
far  as  the  transportation  organization  was  concerned,  a  dif- 
ferent status  from  that  of  either  the  National  Guard  or  the 
Regular  Army.  National  Guardsmen  and  Regulars  were  part 
of  the  military  organization  before  they  boarded  the  trains, 
and  it  was  the  duty  of  the  troop-movement  system  to  conduct 
every  phase  of  their  progress,  from  entraining  to  destination. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  great  democratic  army  raised  by  the 
Selective  Service  Law  was  the  gift  of  a  free  people  to  its 
Government  and  its  military  organization;  and  therefore  the 
people  themselves  assembled  the  young  selectives  and  deliv- 
ered them  to  the  Army  at  certain  designated  places — to  begin 
with,  the  sixteen  National  Army  cantonments.  Theoretically, 
the  military  transportation  organization  had  no  part  in  the 
mobilization  of  the  National  Army  at  its  cantonments.  It 
handled  National  Army  troops  on  the  rails  only  after  they  had 
donned  the  uniform  and  taken  their  places  in  the  organized 
ranks. 

But  only  theoretically.  In  actual  practice,  the  Army  engi- 
neered the  transfer  of  the  hosts  of  civilian  soldiers  from  homes 
to  cantonments.  This  service  took  the  form  of  volunteer  assist- 
ance. The  travel  of  conscripted  men  to  camp  rested  ostensibly 
in  the  hands  of  the  civilian  state  authorities ;  but  the  prompter 
behind  the  scenes  was  the  Army  itself,  so  ordering  and  organ- 


52  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

izing  the  whole  enterprise  that  this  vast  tide  of  military  travel 
should  flow  as  smoothly  as  any  other  main  current  of  the 
tremendous  human  flux. 

The  Selective  Service  Law  placed  on  the  administration  of 
each  state  the  duty  of  registering,  exempting,  calling  out  for 
military  service,  and  transporting  to  the  military  centers  the 
men  within  the  scope  of  its  provisions.  But  to  have  permitted 
each  state  to  devise  and  carry  out  its  own  drafting  system 
would  have  been  to  risk  confusion  and  the  failure  of  the  law 
to  do  what  Congress  intended.  Consequently  the  law  provided 
that  the  Provost  Marshal  General  should  maintain  supervisory 
control  over  the  entire  operation  of  the  draft.  He  enlisted  as 
his  aides  the  adjutant  generals  of  the  various  states,  consulted 
with  the  governors  as  to  the  appointment  of  local  and  district 
boards  of  registration  and  exemption,  set  the  dates  for  regis- 
tering and  induction,  provided  blank  forms  for  the  whole 
enterprise,  and  in  general  gave  to  the  draft  system  that  scien- 
tific coordination  without  which  it  could  scarcely  have  been  a 
success.  And,  also  in  an  advisory  capacity,  the  Provost  Marshal 
General  took  charge  of  the  transportation  of  the  inducted  men 
to  their  cantonments.  It  is  for  this  reason  that,  in  the  cyclo- 
ramic  spectacle  which  the  mighty  citizens'  army  constituted  on 
the  initial  stage  of  its  journey  to  France,  the  Army's  own  travel 
bureau,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  of  the  Division  of  Purchase, 
Storage,  and  Traffic,  does  not  appear.  But  we  do  find  in  a 
leading  role  that  most  important  adjunct  of  the  Inland  Traffic 
Service,  the  troop-movement  office  of  the  American  Railway 
Association.  This  civilian  organization,  acting  directly  in  co- 
operation with  the  Provost  Marshal  General,  arranged  to  the 
minutest  detail  for  the  mobilization  by  rail  of  the  National 
Army. 

Never  had  there  been  such  an  excursion  before,  never  such 
a  challenge  to  organized  transportation.  The  assembling  of 
great  national  conventions,  or  even  the  movement  of  such 
military  forces  as  we  had  known  up  to  that  date  in  our  his- 
tory, were  elementary  traffic  problems  in  comparison.  Here 
was  a  task  that  involved,  not  a  few  main  trunk  lines,  but  the 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  53 

entire  railroad  network  of  the  United  States.  This  was  spe- 
cial transportation,  not  from  a  few  score  or  even  a  few  hun- 
dred stations,  but  from  thousands  of  them;  from  wherever, 
in  short,  there  was  even  a  single  man  waiting  to  be  taken  to 
a  cantonment.  The  troop-movement  office  accepted  complete 
responsibility  in  this  undertaking,  save  for  one  small  particu- 
lar. It  asked  merely  that  the  draft  boards  assemble  their  men 
at  county  seats  or  other  local  centers  that  possessed  railroad 
facilities.  Thus,  almost  without  exception,  it  picked  up  the 
millions  of  selectives  within  walking  or  driving  distance  of 
their  own  homes. 

To  accomplish  such  a  result,  the  troop-movement  office  built 
up  a  special  organization,  one  which  functioned  almost  auto- 
matically. The  Washington  headquarters  appointed  an  officer 
to  serve  in  collaboration  with  the  governor  or  adjutant  general 
of  each  state,  and  to  act  as  the  passenger  traffic  expert  in  charge 
of  the  travel  of  drafted  men  from  that  state.  This  officer  was 
selected  not  only  for  his  wide  practical  experience  and  ability 
in  passenger  transportation,  but  also  for  his  temperamental 
adaptability  to  a  position  in  which  he  must  serve  both  the 
railroad-military  and  the  civilian  authorities.  The  ideal  repre- 
sentative was  a  man  of  breadth  of  mind  and  vision,  unpreju- 
diced by  his  past  associations  in  favor  of  any  one  railroad  line 
or  system,  and  able  to  view  the  entire  trackage  of  his  execu- 
tive domain  as  a  single  unit.  The  presence  of  such  a  man  in 
the  capital  made  the  state  administration  to  which  he  was 
assigned  expert  in  the  manipulation  of  traffic.  With  such  skill 
in  the  forty-nine  headquarters,  there  was  little  likelihood  of 
the  delays  and  misunderstandings  which  were  certainly  to  have 
been  anticipated  had  the  undertaking  been  attempted  by 
novices,  working  out  traffic  problems  in  consultation  with  the 
railroads. 

The  minutiae  of  operation  had  to  extend  to  every  railroad 
station  at  which  even  a  single  inducted  man  was  to  be  en- 
trained. There  were  over  4,500  such  points  in  the  United 
States.  At  each  draft  call,  the  troop-movement  office  prepared 
in  advance  a  printed  schedule  for  the  entrainment  and  trans- 


54  THE  ROAD  TO  FR.\NCE 

portation  of  every  man  included.  In  compiling  these  schedules, 
the  office  called  upon  the  railroad  passenger  traffic  associations 
of  the  United  States.  The  system  worked  approximately  as 
follows : 

Through  its  direct  channel  to  the  Provost  Marshal  General 
in  Washington,  the  troop-movement  office  received  its  broad 
general  instructions  for  any  impending  movement  of  select- 
ives — the  date  on  which  the  movement  must  begin,  the  num- 
ber of  men  called  out,  the  period  within  which  the  transporta- 
tion must  be  completed.  Turning  to  its  traffic  representatives 
at  the  state  capitals,  the  troop-movement  office  obtained  the 
details — the  number  of  men  to  be  entrained  at  each  station  in 
that  state,  and  the  destination  to  which  each  selective  was 
to  proceed.  This  mass  of  information  was  then  divided  into 
groups  geographically  and  placed  for  action  in  the  hands  of 
the  passenger  traffic  associations.  Since  each  association  was 
composed  of  the  general  passenger  agents  of  all  the  railways 
in  the  association's  territory,  the  members  of  each  had  at  their 
fingers'  ends  the  necessary  data  for  a  schedule  covering  that 
district.  Wherever  it  was  possible,  the  inducted  men  were  sent 
aboard  regular  trains,  usually  in  special  cars.  But  when  the 
times  of  departure  of  regular  trains  were  not  convenient,  and 
whenever  the  confluent  traffic  had  swelled  to  abnormal  volume, 
the  movement  was  conducted  upon  special  trains.  The  traffic 
associations  appraised  their  operating  facilities  and  built  up 
their  draft  schedules  with  regular  or  special  train  movements, 
as  their  particular  exigencies  prescribed.  It  was  thus,  by  a  sys- 
tem of  both  regular  and  special  trains  bringing  the  selectives 
together,  first  in  small  trickles  like  headwater  rivulets,  the 
volume  constantly  growing  until  finally  broad  currents  were 
debouching  into  the  mobilization  camps,  that  the  entire  draft 
movement  was  handled.  Everything  was  scheduled  through 
in  advance,  with  no  detail  overlooked.  The  central  office  in 
Washington  arranged  for  the  passage  of  troop  trains  across 
the  boundaries  of  the  traffic  territories. 

It  is  evident  that  there  was  a  tremendous  amount  of  detail 
involved  in  the  preparation  of  a  draft-travel  schedule.  The 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  SS 

task  amounted  to  the  creation  of  an  emergency  passenger  train 
service  for  the  entire  United  States,  which  service  was  to 
function  for  a  few  days  and  then  disappear.  It  might  naturally 
enough  be  supposed  that  preparation  for  one  of  the  great 
entrainments  would  require  months.  But  so  proficient  did  the 
troop-movement  office  become  in  its  work  that,  on  the  four- 
teenth day  after  its  receipt  of  notice  of  an  impending  general 
call  for  drafted  men,  it  could  be  ready  to  transport  these  men 
by  hundreds  of  thousands.  In  that  fortnight  it  collected  every 
needful  detail  of  information,  prepared  schedules  showing  the 
exact  minute  of  the  day  when  each  man  was  to  board  his 
train,  printed  the  schedules,  and  distributed  them  throughout 
the  United  States,  placing  a  copy  in  the  hands  of  everyone 
concerned,  down  to  the  local  board  member  and  the  leader  in 
charge  of  each  contingent  of  inducted  men.  Not  only  that,  but 
ordinarily  it  completed  the  printing  and  distribution  of  sched- 
ules five  or  six  days  ahead  of  the  first  departures,  so  as  to  give 
the  travelers-to-be  plenty  of  time  to  familiarize  themselves 
with  the  arrangements.  The  secret  of  this  speed  was,  in  a 
phrase,  central  control  of  decentralized  organization. 

Near  the  end  of  this  record  may  be  found  a  reproduction* 
of  the  schedule  for  the  entrainment  and  movement  of  3,500 
drafted  men  of  Minnesota  to  Camp  Forrest,  a  special  training 
camp  at  Lytle,  Georgia.  The  schedule  shows  implicitly  the 
solicitous  oversight  given  by  the  central  transportation  authori- 
ties to  the  induction  of  the  National  Army  into  its  camps. 
This  particular  movement  was  one  of  the  last  to  occur.  Mili- 
tary transportation  was  then  at  its  highest  efficiency.  These 
3,500  selectives  were  collected  throughout  Minnesota — even 
from  as  far  north  as  the  Canadian  border — and  carried  to 
Georgia  and  set  down  in  camp  within  a  period  of  five  days. 
The  schedule  for  this  movement  was  so  plain  and  so  lucid 
that  any  man  in  the  contingent  who  could  read  at  all  must 
infallibly  have  understood  it.  The  average  railroad  time-table 
issued  for  public  consumption  is  a  Chinese  puzzle  by  compari- 
son. Each  Minnesota  station  was  given  its  separate  place  in 

*  Appendix  B. 


56  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  schedule,  with  the  time  of  departure  of  the  train  and  its 
time  of  arrival  at  the  first  important  center.  The  schedule 
showed  the  county  seat  or  railroad  town  to  which  the  drafted 
men  of  each  county  were  to  go  to  entrain.  It  showed  the  num- 
ber of  men  expected  to  entrain  at  each  point,  the  railroad  route 
to  be  followed  through  to  the  camp  in  the  South,  and  the 
detailed  time-table  from  the  particular  individual's  community 
to  the  first  principal  concentration  point.  It  even  indicated 
what  arrangements  had  been  made  for  meals  en  route. 

The  feeding  of  selectives  on  the  way  to  camp  was  a  sizeable 
job  in  itself.  It  was  the  province  of  the  Army  to  feed  all  other 
traveling  troops,  but  the  individual  carriers  supplied  meals  for 
the  selectives.  When  inducted  men  were  to  ride  for  only  short 
distances,  the  railroad  usually  provided  box  lunches  for  them. 
The  Minnesota  schedule  shows  that  these  men  ate  at  station 
restaurants,  at  hotels,  and  on  dining  cars  attached  to  the  trains. 
This  was  a  typical  arrangement.  The  dining  car  was  the  rule 
on  the  special  train  carrying  inducted  men,  but  the  railroads 
might  provide  as  they  found  expedient.  When  a  railroad  pos- 
sessed a  good  chain  of  station  restaurants  and  could  arrange 
to  have  its  trains  arrive  at  those  restaurants  at  suitable  hours, 
it  sometimes  fed  its  draft  passengers  there.  The  government 
authorities  allowed  two-hour  intervals,  at  morning,  noon,  and 
night,  for  meals,  and  insisted  that  the  soldiers  be  fed  within 
those  periods.  The  contingents  of  drafted  men  traveled  under 
the  direction  of  leaders,  each  appointed  by  the  local  draft 
board.  The  leader  carried  for  each  member  of  his  party  a  rail- 
road ticket  and  a  sufficient  quantity  of  meal  tickets,  which  he 
issued  as  needed.  Each  meal  ticket  was  worth  sixty  cents;  it 
was  accepted  as  legal  tender  on  railroad  dining  cars,  in  rail- 
road restaurants,  and  wherever  the  railroads  had  arranged  for 
troop  feeding;  and  local  quartermasters  redeemed  it  later  at 
face  value. 

The  first  call  for  drafted  men  summoned  687,000  of  them 
from  4,531  railroad  points  in  the  United  States.  At  the  time 
the  call  went  forth  the  sixteen  cantonments  were  far  from 
ready  to  receive  their  future  tenants.  At  some  of  them  the 


From    The   War   College  Collection 

RAILROAD  BOX  LUNCHES  FOR  TRAVELING  SELECTIVES 


iSMlBllmfl^ 

^.5-■• 

From    The   If' ar   College   Collection 

DRAFT  TRAIN  LEAVING  A  RHODE  ISLAND  CITY 


From    The   War   College   Collection 

A  NEW  ENGLAND  TOWN  DINES  ITS  INDUCTIVES 


3 

^^^^^^^HHtH ^^H    -fMgfeii-    ^^if"^ r -^^^'^ ^^^m^^Hf^'^i^^^^^^^m^^^^^^^^^^mk 

Photo  by  Kansas  City  Post 

WHEN  THE  WAR  BEGAN  TO  STRIKE  HOME 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  57 

work  of  construction  had  not  been  in  progress  for  more  than 
four  weeks;  yet  the  military  program  required  such  a  stage  of 
completion  by  September  1  that  each  of  the  sixteen  centers 
should  be  ready  to  house  one-third  of  its  40,000  future  tenants 
in  barracks  of  stanch  construction,  and  also  to  give  the  men 
such  sanitary  necessities  and  public  utility  conveniences  as  are 
enjoyed  only  by  the  inhabitants  of  cities.  It  is  to  the  credit 
of  the  Construction  Division  of  the  Army  that  the  work  was 
almost  completed  in  the  short  time  allowed.  The  movement 
of  drafted  men  to  the  cantonments  was  not  greatly  delayed  by 
the  non-completion  of  the  quarters,  except  at  one  or  two  camps 
where  labor  shortages  and  railroad  congestion  had  hindered 
the  work. 

On  August  13  the  Provost  Marshal  General  specified  that, 
of  the  first  draft  of  687,000  men,  200,000,  or  30  per  cent, 
should  entrain  in  a  period  beginning  September  1,  another  30 
per  cent  beginning  September  15,  and  a  third  30  per  cent 
September  30,  the  rest  to  follow  as  soon  as  was  practicable. 
This  plan  was  later  so  modified  as  to  bring  out  the  first  con- 
tingent on  September  5.  This  was  done  in  order  to  avoid  the 
Saturday  half-holiday,  Sunday,  and  Labor  Day,  three  of  the 
first  five  days  in  September.  Soon  it  transpired  that  it  would 
be  unwise  to  burden  the  transportation  lines  with  this  heavy 
load  of  drafted  troops  during  the  very  height  of  the  travel  of 
the  National  Guard  to  the  southern  training  camps;  and  on 
August  25  the  call  for  drafted  men  was  again  modified  so  as 
to  bring  out  5  per  cent  beginning  September  5,  and  thereafter 
40  per  cent  beginning  September  19  and  40  per  cent  beginning 
October  3,  the  final  15  per  cent  to  start  for  the  cantonments 
on  October  17.  With  some  slight  exceptions,  this  plan  was 
carried  out. 

The  first  men  of  the  National  Army  left  their  homes  on 
September  5,  and  the  movement  was  completed  on  September 
9,  exactly  as  scheduled.  Only  5  per  cent  of  the  first  draft, 
35,000  men,  moved  in  these  five  days,  at  the  rate  of  7,000  a 
day.  Because  of  the  slightness  of  the  movement,  divided  as  it 
was  among  fourteen  destinations   (neither  Camp  Upton,  at 


58  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

New  York  City,  nor  Camp  Meade,  near  Washington,  was  yet 
ready  to  receive  troops),  it  was  accommodated  entirely  upon 
the  regular  passenger  trains.  Not  until  September  19  did  the 
drafted  men  begin  flowing  into  the  cantonments  in  great  num- 
bers. Then  were  depicted  scenes  which  will  forever  live  in  the 
memories  of  those  who  witnessed  them. 

The  predictions  of  those  opponents  of  the  selective  service 
system  who  prophesied  that  the  conscripts  would  be  dragged 
from  their  homes  into  the  military  service  like  shame-faced 
culprits,  were  shown  to  be  utterly  false.  The  eager  spirits  who 
had  volunteered  went  to  war  amid  no  such  scenes  of  celebra- 
tion and  patriotic  emotion  as  heartened  the  men  inducted  for 
service  in  the  National  Army.  In  the  cheering  throngs  which 
crowded  the  railroad  stations  as  the  trains  bore  off  the  young 
men  of  the  land,  there  was  doubtless  many  a  heartburning  at 
the  thought  of  relatives  who  had  volunteered  and  gone  away 
officially  unhonored.  The  departure  of  the  selectives  from 
almost  every  community  in  the  United  States  was  made  the 
occasion  for  formality  and  ceremony.  Towns  were  in  holiday 
attire  for  the  occasion,  buildings  draped  with  the  national 
colors,  stores,  offices,  and  factories  closed ;  and  people  thronged 
the  streets.  The  inducted  men  gathered  at  the  quarters  of  their 
local  boards.  Photographers  were  on  the  spot  to  snap  the  offi- 
cial pictures  of  the  selectives,  who  lined  up  in  as  soldierly  a 
posture  as  they  know  how  to  strike.  The  chairmen  of  the 
boards  made  speeches  full  of  patriotic  ardor,  reminding  the 
men  of  the  great  and  solemn  duty  ahead  of  them,  and  inci- 
dentally calling  their  attention  to  the  regulations  prescribed 
for  their  journey  to  the  training  camps.  There  were  other 
addresses,  perhaps,  by  the  great  men  of  the  town;  and  then 
the  selectives  went  to  the  railroad  station,  either  riding  in 
gaily  decorated  automobiles  or  marching  on  foot,  preceded  by 
the  best  band  the  community  afforded,  and  sometimes  escorted 
by  the  veterans  of  other  wars.  Passing  through  the  streets,  the 
men  heard  such  cheers  as  greet  only  heroes.  There  was  nothing 
in  the  induction  that  savored  of  duress  or  the  compulsion  of 
the  unwilling.  These  men  started  on  the  road  to  France  as 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  59 

high-heartedly  as  the  most  fervidly  impulsive  of  volunteers; 
and,  indeed,  there  was  among  them  many  a  man  of  the  volun- 
teer spirit  who  had  preferred  to  wait  for  this  hour  and  take 
comradeship  in  the  most  democratic  army  the  nation  had  ever 
sent  forth.  Through  cheers  and  tears,  laughter  and  weeping, 
the  din  of  horns  and  shouts  of  encouragement  or  bantering 
derision — for  young  America  laughs  most  easily  in  moments 
of  solemnity — the  selectives  made  their  way  to  the  railroad 
station,  followed  thither  by  half  the  town,  which  would  re- 
main to  cheer  and  bid  Godspeed  to  the  inducted  men  until  the 
train  had  gone  on. 

Unfortunately,  local  exuberance  and  pride  did  not  always 
take  such  innocuous  forms.  There  were  some  who  fancied  that 
parting  could  not  be  diily  celebrated  without  the  aid  of  strong 
drink.  In  one  western  city  from  which  the  departure  of  the 
local  contingent  occurred  on  a  Sunday  evening,  the  over- 
enthusiastic  mayor  allowed  the  saloons  to  remain  wide  open. 
The  saloon-keepers  entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  day  and  gave 
the  selectives  carte  blanche  among  their  shelves.  Many  of  the 
men  of  this  contingent  boarded  the  special  train,  not  only  with 
all  the  intoxicating  liquor  they  could  hold  inside  them,  but 
with  all  they  could  carry  in  their  arms  besides.  There  were 
other  instances  of  this  sort,  and  distressing  results  followed — 
property  destruction  and  the  general  wanton  vandalism  of 
intoxication — until  finally  the  Government  itself  was  forced 
to  take  cognizance  and  act. 

The  story  of  this  phase  of  the  transportation  of  drafted 
troops  is  incomplete  without  a  reference  to  the  classic  journey 
made  by  a  trainload  of  Arizona  selectives  in  the  days  when 
drunkenness  and  departure  for  a  national  camp  sometimes 
went  hand  in  hand.  The  train,  a  special,  carried  a  wild  and 
untamed  motley  of  passengers — cowboys  from  the  great 
ranches,  Mexicans,  sheep  herders,  prospectors,  desert  dwellers, 
Indians,  hard  rock  men  from  the  copper  mines,  adventurers, 
business  men,  school  teachers,  mining  engineers,  and  men  from 
the  East  who  had  originally  sought  the  Southwest  for  their 
health  and  been  mended  by  the  salubrious  climate  of  the  pic- 


6o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

turesque  country  from  which  the  Selective  Service  Law  took 
them.  Aboard  the  train  were  a  lawyer  and  several  graduates  of 
the  eastern  universities.  And  from  millionaire  to  horse  wran- 
gler, the  selectives  aboard  that  train  had  one  trait  in  common : 
they  were  drunk,  and  not  just  drunk,  but  extravagantly  and 
supremely  drunk.  Few  men  aboard  had  escaped  the  contagion. 
The  exhilaration  and  half-terror  of  going  at  last  into  the 
greatest  of  adventures,  joined  with  the  superinduced  exalta- 
tion of  alcohol,  had  put  these  blithe  spirits  "on  the  top  of  the 
wave." 

There  was  in  their  travel  little  of  the  bestiality  that  branded 
some  of  the  other  drunken  trips  of  the  period.  The  journey  of 
the  Arizona  contingent  was  an  escapade  in  rough  playfulness, 
conducted  with  a  gravity  in  keeping  with  the  occasion.  It  is 
true  that  once  the  men  threw  an  offending  porter  overboard  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  and  that  some  conscientious  soul  hurled 
after  him  a  blanket  in  which  (in  the  slightly  improbable  event 
of  his  surviving  the  fall)  he  could  wrap  his  unclothed  form 
against  the  chill  of  the  mountain  air;  it  is  true  that  a  fury 
of  gambling  blocked  the  aisles,  and  that  there  were  sporadic 
fights  and  a  continuity  of  profane  speech.  But  these  were  the 
extremes. 

The  selectives  had  boarded  the  train  in  Arizona  consider- 
ably, as  an  observer  reported  it,  "the  worse  for  wear."  Admir- 
ing friends,  men  of  their  own  boisterous  stamp,  had  plied  them 
with  stirrup  cups  ere  they  departed  to  meet  the  Hun,  and  few 
had  been  able  to  resist  the  hospitality.  The  draft  authorities 
at  the  various  entraining  points,  however,  had  taken  the  pre- 
caution to  confiscate  all  the  inductees'  bottles  before  they  got 
on  the  train.  The  next  morning,  when  the  passengers  awoke, 
they  found  themselves  high  and  dry  in  Colorado — more  par- 
ticularly, dry.  A  great  thirst  pervaded  the  train  from  baggage 
car  to  tail  lights.  The  morning  was  at  its  coldest  and  grayest 
to  the  selectives  when,  as  if  in  response  to  their  mute  appeal, 
the  train  stopped  at  a  Colorado  station;  and  there  across  the 
dusty  street,  with  a  knot  of  cow  ponies  tied  to  the  rail  in 
front  of  it,  was  a  screened  emporium  proclaiming  on  its  signs 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  61 

that  therein  were  buyable  malt,  vinous,  and  spirituous  liquors. 
With  glad  shouts  the  passengers  evacuated  the  train  and 
dashed  to  the  common  goal.  A  few  minutes  later,  when  the 
distracted  proprietor  saw  the  last  of  his  unwelcome  patrons 
depart  through  the  swinging  door,  he  was  also  witness  to  the 
disappearance  of  the  last  bottle  of  his  stock.  The  place  had 
been  looted  clean. 

Thereafter  things  livened  up  on  the  train.  One  favorite 
diversion  of  the  selectives  was  to  climb  up  on  the  roofs  of  the 
cars  whenever  the  train  stopped.  The  trainmen  protested  to 
them  that,  because  of  tunnels  and  overhead  bridges  further 
on,  the  train  could  not  be  started  when  loaded  in  such  fashion, 
only  to  be  met  with  counter-argument  and  rebuttal.  At  length, 
however,  reason  prevailed,  and  the  train  took  up  its  riotous 
course.  Lest  their  arms  lose  cunning  for  want  of  exercise,  the 
cowmen  got  out  their  lariats  at  Trinidad,  Colorado,  and  began 
to  practice,  with  brilliant  success,  upon  innocent  bystanders 
on  the  station  platform. 

Certain  wild  fellows  who  had  been  living  lonely  lives  in 
the  interior  regions  of  Arizona  had  not  been  able  to  bear  the 
parting  from  their  pets,  and  they  had  solved  the  problem  by 
bringing  the  pets  with  them.  One  prospector  had  fetched  along 
a  tame  wildcat — tame,  that  is  to  say,  to  its  master,  though  it 
spat  and  glared  ferociously  at  all  others.  Another  car  possessed 
a  scarred  bulldog;  a  third  was  proud  in  the  ownership  of  an 
oft-embattled  goat.  As  time  went  on,  considerable  contention 
arose  over  the  respective  fighting  qualities  of  these  animals, 
and  eventually  it  was  decided  to  settle  the  question  of  suprem- 
acy in  a  contest,  a  battle  royal,  in  which  the  wildcat,  the  goat, 
and  the  bulldog  should  engage  simultaneously.  This  affair  was 
staged  on  the  station  platform  at  La  Junta,  Colorado.  History 
does  not  relate  on  whom  the  honors  of  battle  rested.  Perhaps 
the  spectators,  with  the  fickleness  of  drunken  men,  forgot  the 
engagement  and  turned  to  other  affairs.  The  goat,  at  least, 
could  not  have  been  worsted,  for  at  a  later  stop  his  admirers 
descended  from  their  car  and  purchased  five  gallons  of  ice 
cream  for  the  animal's  supper. 


62  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

There  were  other  pets  aboard  which  laid  no  claim  to  emi- 
nent pugnacity.  One  car  flaunted  a  jackrabbit,  another  some 
puppies,  a  third  three  chickens  which  spent  most  of  the  time 
roosting  dejectedly  upon  the  coat  hooks.  This  carload  of 
celebrants  insisted  upon  special  privileges,  and  at  intervals 
kept  the  train  waiting  while  the  chickens  were  exercised.  The 
exercise  for  the  fowls  was  largely  vicarious:  it  consisted  of 
riding  on  a  broom  handle  carried  up  and  down  the  station 
platform  by  one  of  their  solicitous  well-wishers. 

One  car  alone  possessed  no  mascot,  and  the  inhabitants 
thereof  moodily  determined  to  rectify  the  disparity.  When  the 
train  stopped  at  a  small  Colorado  town,  the  passengers 
descried  near  the  station  an  automobile  of  the  best  known  of 
all  makes.  Commandeering  this  machine,  a  few  of  them  drove 
down  the  main  street  with  all  the  speed  they  could  coax  from 
the  engine,  a  cowboy  with  swinging  lasso  on  each  running 
board.  Presently  the  driver  saw  ahead  a  white  bulldog  sitting 
at  the  edge  of  the  sidewalk.  He  ran  close,  and  the  cowboy 
on  the  near  running  board  roped  the  dog  and  dragged  him 
howling  into  the  speeding  car.  The  dog  chanced  to  belong 
to  the  local  constable,  who  emerged  from  a  building  with 
haste,  cranked  up  his  own  Ford,  and  gave  hot  pursuit.  He 
caught  the  marauders  at  the  station,  but  it  required  his  full 
powers  of  persuasion  before  the  selectives  would  surrender  the 
dog. 

The  Arizona  incident  and  others  of  a  more  destructive 
import  brought  about  a  change  in  the  method  of  handling 
selectives  to  cantonments.  As  the  law  was  first  administered, 
the  drafted  men  did  not  officially  become  members  of  the 
Army  until  they  had  reached  camp  and  got  into  their  uniforms. 
In  the  Northwest  several  trains  made  their  way  through  to 
Camp  Lewis  in  the  state  of  Washington  to  the  accompaniment 
of  most  disgraceful  and  even  bloody  scenes.  Railroad  equip- 
ment suffered  severely  on  these  occasions.  The  Government  de- 
termined to  stop  the  trouble,  of  which  intoxicating  liquor  was 
nearly  always  the  proximate  cause.  Congress  had  already 
passed  a  law  making  it  an  offense  to  give  or  sell  liquor  to  a 


Photo  from  American  Red  Cross 

THE  MARCH  TO  THE  RAILROAD  STATION 


From    The   If ar   College   Collection 


A  MONTANA  STATION  CROWD  WHEN  THE 
DRAFT  TRAIN  LEFT 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  63 

man  in  the  military  or  naval  establishments.  The  Provost 
Marshal  General  changed  the  mobilization  regulations  to  pro- 
vide for  arm-bands,  or  brassards,  stitched  on  the  sleeves  of 
selected  men  at  the  time  of  their  induction  by  the  local  draft 
boards.  This  practice  put  the  men  technically  in  uniform 
before  they  said  farewell  to  their  fellow  townsmen,  and  it 
effectively  ended  the  disorder  aboard  the  trains. 

The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  placed  its  welfare  workers  upon  most  of 
the  draft  trains.  These  workers,  usually  well  selected,  were 
able  to  do  helpful  work.  At  times,  however,  unwise  men 
attempted  to  supply  spiritual  ministrations  when  the  occasions 
were  not  auspicious.  Such  a  one  was  the  war  worker  aboard 
the  Arizona  train.  To  his  report  of  what  had  occurred  on  this 
trip  he  appended  the  indignant  comment:  "Do  you  think  we 
could  get  a  song  service  or  religious  meeting  with  this  gang*? 
No,  sir!  All  we  could  do  was  personal  effort."  The  war 
workers  accompanying  selectives  to  camp  rendered  written 
accounts  of  each  movement  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  War  Board. 
The  more  picturesque  aspects  of  the  excursions  may  be  re- 
viewed in  these  files,  which  contain  many  an  amusing,  dramatic, 
or  pathetic  anecdote. 

On  a  train  moving  westward  from  Danville  in  the  Blue 
Mountains  of  Virginia,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  was  distressed 
by  the  wailing  and  sobbing  of  a  young  mountaineer,  a  veritable 
giant  in  physical  proportions.  Sobs  shook  his  great  bulk  of 
bone  and  muscle,  two  hundred  pounds  of  it,  and  his  blubber- 
ing could  be  heard  from  one  end  of  the  car  to  the  other.  The 
welfare  man,  attempting  to  comfort  him,  learned  to  his  sur- 
prise that  the  youthful  giant  was  no  craven :  his  outburst  was 
not  due  to  his  fear  of  going  to  war.  He  had  arranged  to  meet 
his  sweetheart  in  Danville  and  to  marry  her  before  departing 
for  camp.  In  some  manner  she  had  lost  her  way  and  failed  to 
meet  him,  and  to  the  homesick  youth  it  seemed  that  he  was 
bidding  her  good-bye  forever.  The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  comforted 
him  with  the  suggestion  that  later  on  he  could  return  on  a 
furlough  and  see  his  inamorata  after  all.  The  young  moun- 
taineer's grief  was  stilled,  and  presently,  as  the  train  moved 


64  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ever  westward  and  never  reached  the  jumping-off  place,  he, 
who  had  never  before  in  his  life  been  ten  miles  away  from 
home,  grew  pop-eyed  with  admiration  of  the  extent  of  the  land. 
It  was  about  fifty  miles  west  of  Danville  that  the  big  voice 
boomed  forth  to  all  who  would  listen:  "Bud,  if  this  old  world 
is  as  big  the  other  way  as  she  is  this,  she's  a  hell-buster  for 
sartain." 

The  first  draft  was  handled  by  American  rail  transportation 
practically  as  scheduled.  Because  not  all  the  cantonments 
reached  loo-per-cent  completion  at  the  same  time,  there  were 
some  modifications  in  the  original  call.  Also,  after  the  drafted 
men  had  started,  the  War  Department  adopted  the  policy  of 
bringing  white  and  colored  selectives  into  the  cantonments  at 
different  intervals,  and  this  action  brought  about  some  changes 
in  the  original  plan.  Moreover,  not  all  the  selectives  included 
in  the  first  call  were  sent  to  the  cantonments:  some  were 
diverted  to  the  coast  defenses  of  the  country.  But  by  the  end 
of  1917  all  of  the  687,000  men  of  the  first  draft  were  in 
uniform. 

Thereafter  the  transportation  of  drafted  troops  from  their 
homes  to  their  training  camps  increased  in  volume  month  by 
month.  The  increase  was  especially  marked  in  the  spring  of 
1918,  when  the  German  Army  began  its  supreme  campaign 
for  Paris  and  the  English  Channel.  Throughout  this  period 
the  regular  movement  of  troops  was  also  expanding  at  a  tre- 
mendous rate.  The  movement  of  selectives  was  always  con- 
ducted as  an  operation  entirely  apart  from  other  troop  trans- 
portation, but  so  efficient  was  the  control  of  all  operations 
that  at  no  time  was  there  interference.  The  equipment  of  roll- 
ing stock  and  tracks,  pooled  in  a  single  system  after  January, 
1918,  was  so  manipulated  that  all  military  transportation 
went  through  promptly  and  in  its  proper  order,  and  at  all  times 
the  civilian  public  found  a  railroad  system  at  its  own  dis- 
posal. The  troop-movement  office  was  called  upon  to  handle 
as  many  as  50,000  drafted  men  in  a  single  day,  and  a  month's 
movement  of  selectives  ran  as  high  as  400,000  men. 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  65 

The  transportation  of  drafted  men  from  their  boards  to  the 
camps  constituted  nearly  a  quarter  of  the  total  military  travel 
during  the  offensive  period  of  the  war.  The  draft  passengers 
numbered  over  2,750,000.  These  men  rode  an  average  dis- 
tance of  388  miles  to  reach  a  mobilization  camp.  The  com- 
posite haul  was  the  equivalent  of  transporting  the  population 
of  Chicago  to  Minneapolis.  Reduced  to  terms  of  travel  by  a 
single  passenger,  the  distance  covered  was  well  over  a  billion 
miles.  The  total  military  passenger  mileage  up  to  November 
1,  1918,  was  nearly  four  and  a  half  billion  miles. 

The  policy  of  the  War  Department  throughout  the  great 
mobilization  was  always  to  move  men  in  the  direction  of 
France,  always  toward  the  ports  of  embarkation.  Cantonments, 
except  those  on  the  Pacific  coast,  generally  drew  their  men 
from  westward.  Draft  trains  usually  moved  toward  the  east. 
Thus  were  avoided  millions  of  miles  of  duplicate  travel. 

During  1917  all  selective  service  troops  went  primarily  to 
the  sixteen  National  Army  cantonments.  In  1918  this  plan 
was  changed,  and  selectives  traveled  directly  to  every  camp, 
post,  and  station  in  the  United  States  and  in  Alaska,  Hawaii, 
and  Porto  Rico.  This  diversity  of  destination  greatly  com- 
plicated the  problem  of  transporting  the  selectives. 

The  perfection  attained  by  the  troop-travel  system  is  best 
exemplified  by  an  occurrence  of  November  11,  1918,  the  day 
of  the  armistice;  an  achievement  which,  as  the  Provost  Mar- 
shal General  comments  in  his  second  annual  report,  "stands 
out  as  a  marvel  of  efficiency."  The  Secretary  of  War  had 
called  for  250,000  new  selectives  to  board  the  trains  and  travel 
to  camp  in  the  five-day  period  beginning  November  1 1 .  The 
troop-movement  office  had  received  its  two  weeks'  notice  of 
this  movement  and  had  completed  all  arrangements.  Schedules 
were  printed  and  in  the  hands  of  the  thousands  who  would 
need  to  consult  them  during  the  five  days  in  question.  As 
the  hour  of  entrainment  drew  near,  it  became  evident  that 
Germany  would  accept  the  drastic  armistice  terms  laid  down 
by  the  Supreme  Command.  Still  the  War  Department  gave 
no  sign  that  military  preparation  was  to  be  stopped  or  re- 


66  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

tarded  in  anticipation  of  the  event,  lest  this  be  interpreted  in 
hostile  quarters  as  a  weakening  of  the  national  resolution. 
Word  came  that  Germany  had  decided  to  sign  the  armistice, 
and  still  there  came  from  the  Department  no  response  that 
could  entail  a  slackening  of  activity.  The  Government  re- 
mained unaffected  by  the  spurious  peace  celebration  which  fol- 
lowed the  groundless  news  dispatch  that  the  war  was  over.  It 
had  been  resolved  that  there  should  be  no  faltering  of  the 
morale  by  reason  of  any  indications  that  victory  was  at  hand. 
Early  on  the  morning  of  November  1 1  the  newspaper  head- 
lines proclaimed  that  the  war  was  over.  The  four-hour  differ- 
ence in  time  made  possible  this  announcement  to  breakfasting 
America.  And  not  yet,  with  the  unofficial  news  in  everyone's 
possession,  did  the  Government  apply  the  brakes  to  the  war 
machine.  Washington  was  waiting  for  the  official  announce- 
ment to  come  from  General  Pershing.  The  draft  boards  and 
the  railroad  organizations  had  their  orders  to  proceed  with 
the  entrainment  of  the  250,000,  just  as  though  victory  were 
still  a  year  away.  On  the  morning  of  November  1 1  the  draft 
trains  started  out  and  began  picking  up  their  little  groups  of 
selectives  from  station  platforms  crowded  with  people  who 
were  celebrating  the  dawn  of  peace. 

In  the  troop-movement  office  the  termination  of  the  war 
was  dramatic  in  the  extreme.  At  10.25  a.m.  the  order  came 
over  the  private  telephone  wire  directly  from  the  Secretary  of 
War  to  cancel  the  entrainment  of  selectives.  Mr.  Hodges  him- 
self, the  chief  of  the  office,  took  the  message.  Long  distance 
telephone  and  telegraph  circuits  had  been  set  up  for  hours. 
In  a  few  minutes  Hodges  had  either  spoken  personally  over  the 
telephone  or  had  wired  directly  to  the  transportation  agents 
at  the  six  army  department  headquarters,  ordering  the  move- 
ment of  drafted  men  to  cease.  These  officials  relayed  the  orders 
to  the  state  transportation  officers  and  to  the  railroads.  Inside 
of  thirty  minutes,  draft  contingents  waiting  on  station  plat- 
forms for  trains  that  were  never  to  arrive  were  notified  that 
they  could  go  home.  Inside  of  the  thirty  minutes,  every  draft 


HAULING  THE  SELECTIVES  67 

troop  train  on  the  rails  was  stopped,  and  many  had  turned 
backward  and  were  distributing  their  passengers  to  the  stations 
at  which  they  had  been  picked  up. 


CHAPTER  VI 
INTERCAMP  TRAVEL 

SCARCELY  had  the  first  selectives  been  set  down  in 
,the  sixteen  cantonments  when  the  needs  of  the  mili- 
tary service  called  for  the  transfer  of  large  numbers  of 
them  from  one  camp  to  another.  Thereafter  for  many  weeks 
these  transfers  constituted  a  large  part  of  the  total  military 
traffic.  From  the  middle  of  October  until  the  end  of  1917,  the 
so-called  intercamp  movement  made  up  at  least  half  the  vol- 
ume of  troop  travel  within  the  United  States.  Intercamp  travel 
continued,  in  fact,  swelling  or  declining  from  time  to  time, 
until  the  armistice  halted  the  march  to  France ;  but  as  the  over- 
seas movement  expanded  in  1918,  it  became  proportionately  a 
smaller  and  smaller  part  of  the  total  travel. 

Activating  this  heavy  travel  between  camps  were  some  of 
the  most  fundamental  principles  of  military  science.  This 
travel  was  a  bustling  manifestation  of  the  strategic  architect's 
work  of  fabricating  a  modem  army.  To  an  outsider  it  might 
seem  that  the  Government,  if  it  were  conscripting  a  field 
expedition,  needed  only  to  call  men  to  a  cantonment,  organize 
a  division  then  and  there  from  the  material  at  hand,  train 
that  division,  ship  it  directly  to  the  Port  of  Embarkation, 
and  then  repeat  this  procedure  at  every  training  center.  But 
in  practice  the  process  was  not  so  simple.  In  the  first  place  a 
modem  army,  and  particularly  one  sent  to  foreign  soil  thou- 
sands of  miles  from  its  sources  of  supply,  must  be  a  self-con- 
tained unit ;  it  must  be  made  up  of  specialist  organizations  of 
men  specially  trained.  A  properly  proportioned  army  is  by  no 
means  entirely  a  combat  force.  In  fact,  for  every  man  in  the 
fighting  zone  there  must  be,  behind  him  and  sustaining  him, 
another  man  in  the  military  service.  The  combatant  troops 
are  but  the  javelin  head  of  the  army;  the  haft  is  equally  im- 


Photo  from   General  Motors    Tiuisu   Ccinpany 

MICHIGAN  TOWN  AND  COUNTRY  FOLK  SAY 
FAREWELL  AT  STATION 


-■,7r^ 


Photo  by  Richard  W.  Sears 

A  BOSTON  CROWD  AT  DEPARTURE  OF  DRAFTED  MEN 


Photo  by   IVinn  i3   Trayham 

THROUGH  THE  CANTONMENT  PERSONNEL  MILL 


From   The  War  College   Collection 

LINED  UP  FOR  FIRST  DRILL 


INTERCAMP  TROWEL  69 

portant,  if  less  glorious,  for  along  it  move  supplies,  reinforce- 
ments, and  human  metal — the  replacements — to  repair  the 
attrition  where  the  thrust  meets  resistance.  If  we  had  placed 
2,000,000  men  on  the  front  against  Germany,  it  would  have 
required  another  2,000,000  men  to  maintain  them  there.  Half 
a  million  of  these  last  would  have  been  combat  troops  organ- 
ized in  divisions  and  engaged  either  in  training  or  in  traveling 
forward  as  reinforcements.  The  million  and  a  half  would  have 
been  assisting  corps  troops  of  various  sorts — service-of-supply 
troops,  replacement  troops,  and  the  troops  required  in  the 
operation  of  the  great  military  establishment  within  the 
United  States. 

In  a  war  so  consuming  as  the  recent  one,  the  matter  of  pro- 
viding replacement  troops  was  not  the  least  difficult  of  the 
problems  with  which  the  army  authorities  had  to  deal.  When 
the  shipments  of  troops  to  France  had  been  properly  regu- 
lated, a  full  quarter  of  those  who  embarked  were  replacement 
troops.  One  man  in  every  four,  then,  sailed  to  take  the  place 
of  some  predecessor  removed  from  active  service  by  death, 
wounds,  sickness,  or  other  disability.  In  all,  nearly  a  quarter 
of  a  million  American  soldiers  crossed  to  France  as  replace- 
ments. And  even  the  replacement  troops  were  specialists.  We 
did  not  herd  men  together  indiscriminately,  label  them  "re- 
placements," and  then  ship  them  overseas,  there  to  be  assorted, 
filtered  into  units  whose  ranks  had  been  depleted,  and  trained 
in  those  new  surroundings.  Our  replacements  first  received 
their  training  here  as  infantry,  artillery  troops,  machine  gun- 
ners, and  what  not,  and  crossed  the  ocean  in  homogeneous  units 
to  go  into  the  reservoir  of  men  from  which  the  combat  divisions 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  drew  to  fill  up  their  files. 

The  building  plan  followed  was  to  train  at  each  of  the  six- 
teen cantonments  one  division  at  a  time,  made  up  of  men  from 
the  district  geographically  tributary  to  that  center.  A  division 
completely  recruited,  including  its  artillery,  numbers  only 
27,000  men,  whereas  each  of  the  cantonments  had  a  housing 
capacity  of  40,000  or  more.  The  excess  thousands  were 
camp-maintenance  troops,  newly  drafted  men  receiving  first 


70  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

military  training,  and  regiments  of  auxiliary  corps  or  replace- 
ment troops  undergoing  special  training  in  one  branch  or 
another. 

Presently,  in  the  evolution  of  the  training  scheme,  each 
of  the  sixteen  camps  began  to  specialize  in  one  or  another  of 
the  principal  army  activities;  for  it  was  obviously  inefficient 
for  the  curriculum  of  one  camp  to  attempt  to  include  all  the 
specialties.  For  example.  Camp  Gordon  in  Georgia,  Camp  Lee 
in  Virginia,  Camp  Pike  in  Arkansas,  Camp  MacArthur  in 
Texas,  and  Camp  Grant  in  Illinois  specialized  in  the  training 
of  infantry  troops,  in  addition  to  their  primary  occupation  of 
whipping  their  resident  divisions  into  shape.  Most  of  the 
infantry  replacement  troops  shipped  during  the  latter  months 
of  the  war  came  from  these  camps.  Camp  Hancock  in  Georgia, 
outside  of  its  regular  divisional  instruction,  specialized  in  the 
training  of  machine  gunners.  Camp  Jackson  in  South  Carolina 
and  Camp  Taylor  in  Kentucky  trained  field  artillerymen. 
Camp  Meade  in  Maryland  specialized  in  the  training  of  Signal 
Corps  troops. 

Then  special  camps  sprang  up  exclusively  for  the  specialized 
training  of  various  corps  troops.  Camp  Humphreys  in  Vir- 
ginia became  an  enormous  center  for  the  training  of  engineer 
troops.  Another  engineer  camp  was  Camp  Forrest  in  Georgia. 
Near  Jacksonville,  Florida,  the  Quartermaster  Corps  estab- 
lished a  great  schooling  center  for  its  men:  Camp  Joseph  E. 
Johnston.  Camp  Meigs  in  Washington,  D.  C,  was  another 
quartermaster  training  camp.  The  Motor  Transport  Corps, 
which  during  most  of  the  war  was  part  of  the  Quartermaster 
Corps,  also  provided  special  instruction  for  its  men  at  Camps 
Johnston  and  Meigs.  The  Medical  Corps  set  up  troop-training 
schools  at  Fort  Oglethorpe  in  Georgia  and  Fort  Riley  in 
Kansas.  The  Signal  Corps  maintained  in  New  Jersey  an  ex- 
clusive training  school  called  Camp  Alfred  J.  Vail.  Troops 
of  the  Coast  Artillery  received  special  training  at  Camp  Eustis, 
Virginia.  The  new  Tank  Corps  built  Camp  Polk  in  North 
Carolina  and  also  operated  a  training  camp  at  Gettysburg, 
Pennsylvania.  The  Chemical  Warfare  Service  established  a 


INTERCAMP  TRAVEL  71 

training  camp  at  Lakehurst,  New  Jersey.  And  the  Air  Service 
maintained  a  large  number  of  flying  fields  and  training  camps 
throughout  the  country. 

In  addition  to  these  and  other  special  camps,  the  Army  met 
the  exigencies  of  war  by  building  up  in  this  country  an  enor- 
mous operating  establishment.  There  was  a  chain  of  general 
and  special  military  hospitals,  each  one  of  which  had  to  be 
manned  with  maintenance  and  operation  troops.  The  great 
supply  warehouses  and  bases  in  this  country  all  required  con- 
tingents of  troops — some  of  them  large  contingents.  It  monop- 
olized the  energies  of  nearly  50,000  officers  and  men  to  con- 
duct the  manifold  operations  of  the  Port  of  Embarkation  at 
New  York,  and  another  big  force  was  required  at  Newport 
News.  Troops  were  called  out  to  operate  some  of  the  military 
manufacturing  plants — especially  those  which  involved  dan- 
ger, such  as  the  toxic  gas  plants  at  Edgewood  Arsenal,  where 
military  discipline  alone  could  ensure  the  maximum  of  indus- 
trial safety,  and  where  it  was  impossible  to  retain  civilian 
workmen.  The  great  military  proving  grounds,  operated  by 
enlisted  men,  each  had  to  have  a  cantonment  of  considerable 
size.  In  addition,  there  were  the  coastal  and  interior  forts  of 
the  United  States  to  be  maintained  at  strength;  the  military 
executive  headquarters  in  Washington  and  elsewhere  required 
soldiers  as  orderlies,  chauffeurs,  and  the  like;  and  there  were 
hundreds  of  small  military  establishments  and  enterprises  in 
the  country,  all  needing  the  presence  of  troops  in  smaller  or 
larger  numbers. 

From  all  this  it  is  evident  that  for  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  draft  selectives,  the  sixteen  cantonments  were  only  the  first 
stop  on  a  military  journey  which  might  or  might  not  take  them 
eventually  to  France,  according  to  each  man's  special  qualifi- 
cations for  service.  As  a  fact,  the  cantonments  became  pri- 
marily great  centers  for  the  sorting  of  men  into  the  supplies 
of  human  raw  material  which  headquarters  used  in  building 
a  completely  rounded  army  with  a  combat  force  in  France 
and  a  sustaining  force  extending  back  and  covering  the  United 
States. 


72  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

When,  after  a  final  physical  examination,  prophylactic 
inoculations,  and  a  brief  quarantine,  the  new  selectives  reached 
their  barracks,  they  were  assigned  to  the  camp  depot  bri- 
gade for  the  preliminary  training  in  infantry  drill  and  the 
manual  of  arms  which  each  soldier  of  a  well-disciplined  army 
must  undergo.  It  was  during  this  interval  that  the  men  met 
the  trade  tests  which  constituted  so  remarkable  a  phase  of  the 
American  military  plan.  These  tests  were  devised  by  experts 
to  include  practically  every  known  industrial  and  commercial 
activity.  The  soldier  might  claim  too  much  or  too  little  ability 
in  any  occupation,  but  an  intelligent  examiner  could,  with  five 
or  six  of  the  test  questions,  rate  him  with  extraordinary  preci- 
sion. Every  soldier's  special  qualifications  were  thus  catalogued 
promptly  after  his  induction.  In  the  card  index  in  Washing- 
ton reposed  a  detailed  inventory  of  the  total  ability  of  the 
great  American  Army  in  every  vocation  in  which  even  a  single 
one  of  its  nearly  4,000,000  members  was  qualified.  Then 
entered  the  strategical  architect,  the  Operations  Branch  of  the 
General  Staff,  who  took  the  data,  sorted  out  the  material,  and 
assigned  each  man  to  an  organization  where  his  particular 
abilities — which  might  be,  and  often  were,  merely  physical — 
best  applied,  and  where  he  was  most  needed  in  order  to  main- 
tain the  steady  flow  toward  France  of  the  power  that  was  to 
bring  the  foe  to  surrender. 

Many  of  these  special  training  camps  were  not  in  operation 
until  1918;  the  various  cantonments  had  not  as  yet  adopted 
specialties,  and  the  system  of  training  replacement  troops  in 
designated  camps  was  not  in  operation  until  late  in  the  spring 
of  1918;  yet  the  intercamp  movement  began  almost  as  soon 
as  the  first  selectives  reached  the  cantonments.  This  early 
translocation  was  due  to  another  element,  one  which  we  have 
not  yet  considered.  The  divisional  organization  of  the  Army, 
as  it  stood  in  1917  and  1918,  was  called  into  existence  to  meet 
the  emergency  of  the  war  with  Germany.  The  First  Expedi- 
tionary Division  was  organized  and  its  units  were  designated 
after  April  6,  1917.  The  Second  Division  was  organized  en- 
tirely in  France,  its  component  units  having  crossed  the  ocean 


INTERCAMP  TRAVEL  73 

without  divisional  identity.  In  this  country,  meanwhile,  divi- 
sions were  being  authorized,  and  divisional  headquarters  estab- 
lished at  all  of  the  thirty-two  camps  and  cantonments. 
Several  of  these  organizations  were  composed  of  Regulars. 
Seventeen  were  made  up  of  National  Guard  troops.  Regular 
divisions  and  National  Guard  divisions  possessed,  in  the 
autumn  of  1917,  one  characteristic  in  common:  they  were  all 
skeletal  in  form,  and  waiting  to  be  fleshed  out  with  recruits. 
Practically  every  one  of  them  had  to  be  built  up  to  strength 
with  conscripted  men. 

A  division  with  a  trained  nucleus  could  be  pointed  for 
foreign  service  much  more  quickly  than  one  made  up  entirely 
of  green  troops.  Thus  it  was  obvious  that  the  first  divisions 
to  be  sent  overseas  must  be  the  Regular  Army  and  National 
Guard  divisions.  All  of  the  National  Guard  divisions  and 
some  of  the  Regular  Army  divisions  existed,  at  least  struc- 
turally, and  were  in  camp  when  the  selectives  were  called  from 
their  homes.  Consequently  the  immediate  concern  of  the  War 
Department  was  to  take  selectives  from  the  cantonments  and 
send  them  to  fill  the  gaps  in  the  organized  and  veteran  ranks. 

This  necessity  created  a  brisk  intercamp  travel  as  soon  as 
the  inducted  men  got  fairly  into  their  uniforms.  In  fact,  the 
earliest  intercamp  trains  began  moving  about  October  10.  At 
this  time  some  of  the  National  Guard  trains  were  still  enter- 
ing the  South.  The  troop-movement  office  found  that  it  re- 
quired delicate  adjustment  of  schedules  and  dates  to  avoid 
overcrowding  the  rails  and  to  prevent  congestions  at  the  gate- 
ways where  north-bound  intercamp  troops  and  south-bound 
National  Guard  units  might  meet.  The  volume  of  intercamp 
travel  multiplied  forthwith.  Between  October  10,  1917,  and 
the  last  day  of  December,  more  than  350  special  trains  carried 
more  than  175,000  troops  between  camps.  The  total  move- 
ment of  troops  between  October  10  and  the  end  of  the  year 
was  slightly  more  than  325,000  passengers.  Thus,  in  these  ten 
or  eleven  weeks,  camp-to-camp  travel  made  considerably  over 
half  the  total  traffic.  Some  500,000  passengers  were  carried 
on  special  troop  trains  from  the  outbreak  of  the  war  until 


74  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

December  31,  1917.  A  clear  third  of  this  traffic  consisted  of 
intercamp  travel  confined  to  the  last  ten  weeks  of  the  year. 

After  the  skeleton  Regular  and  National  Guard  divisions 
had  been  filled  up  from  the  reservoirs  of  the  National  Army- 
cantonments,  and  the  National  Army's  own  divisions  were 
organized  and  in  training,  the  special  schools,  now  set  up, 
began  calling  for  soldier  students  by  tens  of  thousands.  More- 
over, a  new  element  had  entered  to  complicate  the  matter. 
The  need  of  replacement  troops  for  the  divisions  in  France 
had  forced  itself  forward  for  official  consideration.  To  find 
these  replacements,  the  Army  turned  to  the  half-trained  ranks 
of  the  National  Army  divisions,  took  men  by  thousands  from 
those  ranks,  and  dispatched  them  overseas  as  replacement 
troops,  thus  making  it  necessary  to  infuse  fresh  material  into 
the  plundered  National  Army  divisions.  The  thinning  of  the 
National  Army  ranks  continued  until  the  late  spring  of  1918, 
when  the  plan  of  training  special  replacement  troops  at  various 
designated  camps  went  into  effect. 

After  the  earliest  overseas  divisions  had  been  brought  up 
to  strength  by  the  addition  of  men  from  the  cantonments  (and 
some  of  the  National  Guard  divisions  drew  more  than  one- 
third  of  their  strength  from  this  source),  the  National  Army 
had  need  to  restore  its  own  strength  and  balance;  and  this 
could  be  done  only  by  the  transfer  of  many  troops.  At  the 
same  time  dozens  of  military  stations  and  establishments, 
large  and  small,  were  springing  into  existence  and  demanding 
men.  Such  needs  continued  throughout  the  period  of  hostili- 
ties and  made  the  transportation  of  troops  between  camps 
always  a  salient  phase  of  inland  traffic. 

One  more  cause  of  extensive  intercamp  travel  was  a  domes- 
tic condition  peculiar  to  the  United  States.  The  negro  prob- 
lem created  many  a  delicate  situation  in  the  construction  of 
the  Army.  There  were  millions  of  negroes  in  the  United  States, 
a  fact  which  forced  the  War  Department  into  a  policy  of 
brigading  them  with  whites.  The  general  military  policy  was 
to  compose  each  National  Army  division  of  troops  drawn 
from  the  vicinitv  of  its  cantonment.  Yet,  when  the  selectives 


Photo  from  American  Red  Cross 

A  TROOP  TRAIN  PASSES 


From  The  War  College  Collection 

A  STOP  IN  A  CALIFORNIA  TOWN 


Photo  from  Ameruiiri  Hid   I  njn 

THE  RED  CROSS  CANTEENS  DREW  NO  COLOR  LINES 


Photo  by   Underwood  6?   Underwood,  N.   Y. 

AN  ENTRAINMENT  AT  CAMP  WADSWORTH 


INTERCAMP  TRAVEL  75 

were  called  out,  it  was  found  that  at  certain  southern  canton- 
ments this  plan  would  create  divisions  in  which  there  were 
more  colored  men  than  whites;  whereas  certain  northern  can- 
tonments housed  divisions  in  whose  ranks  were  scarcely  any 
negroes.  Of  this  distribution  was  born  the  policy  of  giving  to 
each  National  Army  division  a  small  percentage  of  negro 
troops,  leaving  each  division  preponderantly  white.  This  policy 
implied  the  transportation  of  thousands  of  southern  negroes 
to  northern  cantonments ;  and  such  withdrawals  created  vacan- 
cies in  the  southern  divisions.  Because  it  would  have  been 
unfair  to  the  white  population  of  the  South  to  go  deeper  into 
the  draft  registration  for  selectives  to  fill  such  gaps,  the  War 
Department  filled  them  by  transferring  white  units  from 
northern  and  western  cantonments  to  those  of  the  South. 

The  permitted  ratio  of  colored  men  to  whites  in  the  divisions 
left  unassigned  a  residue  of  thousands  of  negro  troops  for 
whom  there  was  no  room  in  existing  organizations.  To  provide 
places  for  these  men  the  Staff  created  two  all-colored  divisions, 
the  Ninety-second  and  the  Ninety-third.  Neither  was  trained 
as  a  unit  in  a  special  camp.  Their  various  components  in  train- 
ing were  scattered  throughout  the  country.  Each  division 
assembled  for  the  first  time  at  the  Port  of  Embarkation  on  its 
way  overseas.  During  the  training  period  the  Ninety-second 
maintained  headquarters  at  Camp  Funston,  Kansas.  This  divi- 
sion represented  the  colored  people  of  the  United  States,  for 
its  troops  had  originated  in  practically  every  state  of  the 
Union.  They  trained  in  various  cantonments,  principally  in 
the  North.  The  Ninety-third  was  preponderantly  southern  in 
composition.  Its  headquarters  were  at  Camp  Stewart,  near 
Newport  News,  Virginia,  where  the  division  assembled  prior 
to  embarkation. 

Intercamp  travel  propounded  an  involved  transportation 
problem  in  that  its  direction  was  not  constant.  All  other  prin- 
cipal military  movements,  except  the  travel  of  the  National 
Guard  to  its  training  camps,  was  in  tendency  toward  the 
ports.  The  intercamp  travel,  although  the  army  organization 
attempted  to  give  it  a  trend  toward  the  ships  and  the  ocean, 


76  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

remained  crisscross.  It  was  usually  over  long  distances,  and 
the  intercamp  trains  were  almost  always  made  up  entirely  of 
sleeping  cars. 

With  embarkation  constantly  on  the  increase,  with  the 
movement  of  selectives  to  training  camps  continuing  steadily, 
and  with  intercamp  travel  at  its  maximum,  military  trans- 
portation reached,  in  the  late  autumn  of  1917,  an  unprece- 
dented volume.  And  then  came  the  first  of  the  holidays. 
Thanksgiving,  to  add  to  the  burden  the  thousands  of  men 
who  were  traveling  on  furlough.  It  is  estimated  that  consid- 
erably more  than  a  quarter  of  a  million  soldiers  received  leave 
to  go  home  at  Thanksgiving  and  again  at  Christmas.  It  was 
at  this  time  that  the  Government  and  the  railroads  asked  the 
civilian  population  to  stay  off  the  passenger  trains  and  to 
travel  only  on  the  most  necessary  business.  Furloughed  men 
at  the  holidays  and  on  Sundays  traveled  on  the  regular  trains, 
but  their  numbers  drew  heavily  upon  the  available  equipment 
of  cars  and  locomotive  power. 

As  army  traffic  grew,  the  skill  of  the  transportation  organi- 
zation in  charge  expanded  with  experience.  Special  travel 
which,  a  few  months  earlier,  would  have  demoralized  the  rail- 
roads and  their  war  organization  was  handled  with  scientific 
and  expert  precision.  By  the  time  snow  flew  in  the  terrific 
winter  of  1917-1918,  the  troop-movement  system  had  attained 
a  professional  assurance  which  inspired  in  the  Government  the 
utmost  confidence  in  its  ability.  The  military  authorities  now 
knew  that  the  system  could  meet  any  demand  laid  upon  it. 

We  can  get  a  picture  of  the  teeming  activity  of  those  days  by 
taking  from  the  daily  records  of  the  troop-movement  office  a 
detailed  account  of  military  travel  on  December  25,  1917 — 
the  war  Christmas.  The  Second,  the  Twenty-sixth,  the  Forty- 
second,  and  the  Forty-first  divisions  were  then  moving  through 
the  Port  of  Embarkation  at  New  York.  Two  trainloads  of 
Second  Division  Infantry  reached  Camp  Merritt,  the  port 
camp  in  New  Jersey,  early  on  Christmas  morning.  Two  aero 
squadrons,  Nos.  167  and  168,  which  had  traveled  on  a  special 
train    from   San   Antonio,    Texas,    reached    Mineola,    Long 


INTERCAMP  TRAVEL  77 

Island,  on  the  evening  of  Christmas  Day,  for  early  departure 
overseas.  Another  overseas  unit,  the  12th  Field  Artillery, 
reached  Newport  News,  Virginia,  on  Christmas  afternoon. 
The  303d  Stevedore  Regiment,  with  about  2,500  men,  started 
from  Newport  News  for  Jersey  City  for  embarkation,  reach- 
ing Jersey  City  the  morning  after  Christmas.  Evacuation  Hos- 
pital No.  3,  which  had  organized  and  trained  at  Fort  Ogle- 
thorpe, Georgia,  started  for  Hoboken.  The  30th  Engineers  left 
their  camp  in  Washington,  D.  C,  at  6.30  p.m.  Christmas  Day, 
on  a  special  train  for  Hoboken.  On  that  memorable  Christmas 
sixteen  special  troop  trains  arrived  at  various  destinations, 
fifteen  other  specials  started  out  from  various  points,  and 
thirteen  trains  spent  the  entire  twenty- four  hours  moving 
along  the  rails.  Approximately  20,000  military  passengers 
were  carried  in  special  trains  on  that  day — a  fair  average  for 
that  period  of  the  war. 

A  considerable  fraction  of  this  traffic  consisted  in  the  move- 
ment of  volunteer  recruits,  especially  those  who  had  enlisted 
for  aviation.  On  Christmas  Day  two  trainloads  of  aviation 
recruits  which  had  traveled  from  San  Francisco  arrived  at 
Waco,  Texas.  Two  trainloads  of  aviation  recruits  from  the 
barracks  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  arrived  Christmas  afternoon  at 
the  flying  field  at  Rockford,  Illinois.  Another  section  of  aero 
recruits,  made  up  of  conscripted  men  from  Camp  Sherman, 
Ohio,  reached  Kelly  Aviation  Field,  Texas,  early  Christmas 
morning.  Another  trainload  of  selectives  from  Camp  Lewis  at 
American  Lake,  Washington,  arrived  at  the  flying  field  at 
Rockford,  Illinois,  on  that  morning.  A  trainload  of  aviation 
recruits  from  Fort  Logan  discharged  its  passengers  at  Kelly 
Field,  Texas.  This  train  had  followed  to  Kelly  Field  another 
trainload  of  recruits  from  Fort  Slocum.  A  section  bearing 
aviation  recruits  from  Spokane,  Washington,  reached  Waco, 
Texas,  on  Christmas  morning.  Another  special  train  which 
reached  its  destination  on  that  day  bore  1,012  ordnance  re- 
cruits from  Fort  Slocum  to  Camp  Upton,  Long  Island.  Three 
recruit  trains  left  Fort  Slocum  on  Christmas  Day:  one  took 
artillery  recruits  to  join  the  two  divisions  of  Regulars  then 


78  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

organizing  at  Camp  Greene,  North  Carolina,  another  carried 
Engineer  Corps  recruits  to  Vancouver  Barracks,  and  a  third 
was  loaded  with  recruits  for  Mercedes,  Texas. 

Nor  is  this  all.  On  the  rails  that  day  rode  a  squadron  of  the 
11th  Cavalry  in  two  trains  en  route  from  Fort  Oglethorpe  to 
San  Diego,  California;  the  4th  Engineers  were  on  three  trains 
bound  from  Vancouver  Barracks  to  Camp  Greene,  North  Caro- 
lina; the  1st  Field  Artillery  rode  in  two  trains  en  route  to 
Fort  Sill,  Oklahoma,  from  San  Francisco;  recruits  filled  one 
train  bound  from  Fort  Logan  to  San  Francisco,  and  another 
from  Vancouver  Barracks  to  Waco,  Texas;  the  8th  Field 
Artillery  traveled  on  three  trains  en  route  from  Fort  Sill  to 
Camp  Wheeler,  at  Macon,  Georgia;  engineer  recruits  were  on 
a  train  bound  for  Camp  Meade,  Maryland,  from  San  Fran- 
cisco; and  an  intercamp  train  carried  National  Army  troops 
from  Camp  Upton,  Long  Island,  to  Charlotte,  North  Caro- 
lina, there  to  join  one  of  the  regular  divisions  training  at 
Camp  Greene. 

The  military  travel  on  our  first  war  Christmas  gives  us  a 
cross  section  of  inland  troop  transportation  at  the  end  of  1917. 
The  New  Year  of  1918  found  the  troop-movement  ofBce  with 
a  record  of  2,850  special  military  trains  operated  for  more 
than  a  million  soldier  passengers.  These  figures  were  exclusive 
of  the  transportation  of  nearly  400,000  selectives  to  their 
cantonments.  By  far  the  greater  part  of  this  travel  had 
occurred  in  the  last  three  months  of  1917.  The  road  to  France 
was  broadening.  It  pulsated  to  the  tread  of  many  thousands. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK 

FROM  the  1st  of  January,  1918,  until  the  armistice 
was  declared  there  was  never  a  day  when  fewer  than 
three  American  Army  divisions  were  traveling  toward 
the  ports  of  embarkation.  Sometimes  there  were  as  many  as 
five  divisions  simultaneously  making  their  way  toward  the 
Atlantic  seaboard.  The  columns  were,  to  be  sure,  somewhat 
strung  out.  Certain  of  the  divisions  took  several  weeks,  or 
even  months,  to  move  through  the  ports.  But  the  average 
transit  was  shorter.  Thirty  days  would  be  a  generous  measure 
of  the  average  interval  between  the  entraining  of  the  first 
divisional  units  at  a  camp  and  the  departure  of  the  organiza- 
tion's last  soldiers  from  American  shores — a  total  which  would 
require  the  major  part  of  the  activity  to  be  compressed  within 
a  fortnight. 

We  may  take  as  a  typical  instance  of  travel  to  the  Port 
of  Embarkation  the  journey  of  the  Thirty-second  Division, 
Michigan  and  Wisconsin  National  Guard  troops  for  the  most 
part,  in  January,  1918,  from  Camp  Mac  Arthur,  near  Waco, 
Texas,  to  Camp  Merritt,  New  Jersey,  whence  it  embarked  on 
the  transports.  In  making  this  journey,  the  entire  division 
traveled  over  1,900  miles.  It  moved  on  61  special  trains,  on 
which  23,685  men  were  passengers.  As  was  usual,  the  animals 
of  the  division  moved  considerably  ahead  of  the  troops.  Two 
stock  trains  with  the  horses  and  mules  left  Waco  on  January 
2  and  3  for  Newport  News,  Virginia,  at  which  port  embarked 
most  of  the  work  animals  of  the  A.  E.  F.  Nearly  100  men  rode 
on  these  freight  trains  to  care  for  the  stock.  The  troop  move- 
ment itself  began  on  January  10  and  continued  daily  from 
the  camp  until  January  23,  when  there  was  a  break  of  a  week. 


8o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

On  February  2  the  activity  began  again ;  and  on  February  8  the 
last  trainload  of  Thirty-second  Division  troops,  except  a  com- 
pany of  infantry  left  behind  to  put  the  camp  in  shape  and 
pick  up  any  property  overlooked  in  the  departure,  pulled  away 
from  Camp  MacArthur. 

Now  let  us  analyze  this  entrainment  in  more  detail.  On 
January  lo  a  single  train  left  the  camp,  bearing  ( i )  the  107th 
Engineer  Train,  with  its  bulky  impedimenta  of  camions  and 
motorized  shops,  and  (2)  two  sanitary  squads  which  were  to 
reach  Camp  Merritt  in  advance  and  put  in  shape  the  quarters 
assigned  to  the  division's  men.  There  were  no  departures  on 
January  1 1 ;  but  on  the  12th  the  107th  Field  Signal  Battalion 
entrained  on  one  special  train  and  the  107th  Supply  Train  on 
another.  Januar}^  13  witnessed  the  departure  of  two  special 
freights,  carrying  the  heavy  equipment  of  the  107th  Ammuni- 
tion Train.  Division  headquarters,  entraining  on  the  14th,  led 
a  close  procession  of  troop  trains  across  the  country  to  Camp 
Merritt.  The  headquarters  special  was  followed  that  same  day 
by  three  trains  carrying  the  troops  of  the  107  th  Regiment  of 
Engineers.  On  January  15,  four  departures  took  from  the  camp 
such  miscellaneous  divisional  units  as  the  120th  Machine  Gun 
Company,  the  headquarters  of  the  63d  Brigade,  the  107th 
Sanitary  Train,  and  the  headquarters  of  the  107th  Regiment, 
together  with  the  division's  military  police. 

Then  the  four  infantr}'  regiments  of  the  division  began  their 
entraining,  the  125th  Regiment  on  four  specials  January  16 
and  on  three  more  the  next  day.  The  regimental  Field  Hospi- 
tal was  accommodated  on  two  trains  of  January  17.  On  the 
18th  the  126th  Regiment  began  its  exodus  from  the  camp, 
three  specials  starting  on  that  day,  two  more  on  the  19th,  and 
two  on  the  20th.  Also  on  January  20,  another  section  de- 
parted, bearing  the  headquarters  of  the  64th  Brigade  and  the 
men  of  the  121st  Machine  Gun  Company.  January  21-23 
encompassed  the  departure  of  the  127th  Infantry  on  seven 
trains,  three  starting  on  the  first  day  and  two  on  each  of  the 
two  succeeding  days. 

The  128th  Infantry  did  not  start  until  February  2,  three 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  81 

specials  leaving  the  camp  on  that  day  and  three  on  the  next. 
On  February  4,  two  companies  of  the  119th  Machine  Gun 
Regiment  entrained  on  one  special,  and  its  third  company, 
together  with  M  Company  of  the  1 28th  Infantry,  on  another. 
This  departure  left  in  the  camp  only  the  division's  artillery 
and  the  single  infantry  unit,  Company  L  of  the  128th  Regi- 
ment, which  supervised  the  evacuation. 

The  Thirty-second  Division's  artillery,  by  rare  exception, 
followed  hard  on  the  tail  lights  of  the  infantry  trains  ahead. 
(The  artillery  of  our  overseas  divisions  did  not  ordinarily  em- 
bark with  the  other  units:  artillery  and  infantry  usually  trav- 
eled through  different  ports.)  The  freight  of  the  1 19th,  120th, 
and  121st  F.  A.  left  camp  on  a  special  train  on  February  5, 
preceded  that  day  by  five  special  troop  trains  carrying  the 
headquarters  of  the  57th  F.  A.  Brigade,  the  headquarters 
of  the  120th  F.  A.  Regiment,  and  the  entire  121st  F.  A.  On 
February  6,  the  headquarters  of  the  1 19th  F.  A.  entrained  on 
a  special  with  the  107th  Trench  Mortar  Battalion,  the  entire 
120th  F.  A.  Regiment  entrained  on  three  specials,  and  three 
companies  of  the  119th  F.  A.  occupied  another  section — five 
specials  on  that  day.  On  the  7th  the  rest  of  the  119th  Regi- 
ment left  camp  on  a  special.  On  February  8,  Camp  MacArthur 
bade  farewell  to  the  Thirty-second  Division  when  the  last 
three  trains  departed,  carrying  the  ambulance  companies  and 
field  hospitals  of  the  127th  and  128th  Infantry  Regiments  and 
Company  L  of  the  128th  Infantry,  the  clean-up  unit. 

This  was  a  typical  divisional  movement  for  embarkation, 
remarkable  neither  for  its  rapidity  nor  for  its  slowness.  In  a 
former  chapter  we  have  seen  an  example  of  great  speed  in 
troop  transportation :  the  movement  of  the  Seventy-ninth  Divi- 
sion, less  its  artillery,  from  Camp  Meade,  Maryland,  to  ship- 
side  in  Hoboken  in  two  days.  At  one  time  during  1918  the 
executives  in  the  troop-movement  office  compassed  the  unique 
achievement  of  an  entire  division,  without  artillery,  moving 
along  the  rails  at  once.  This  was  the  Ninety-first,  composed  of 
selectives  from  the  Northwest  and  Alaska,  and  trained  at 
Camp  Lewis,  American  Lake,  Washington.  Except  for  some 


82  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

miscellaneous  advance  units,  the  movement  of  the  Ninety- 
first  Division  from  Camp  Lewis  began  on  June  22.  The  troops 
left  camp  at  the  rate  of  seven  trainloads  a  day,  and  the 
evening  of  June  28  found  at  the  camp  only  the  division's 
artillery.  The  last  special  had  pulled  away  from  American 
Lake  before  the  first  of  the  trains  of  June  22  had  arrived  at 
Camp  Merritt. 

The  movement  of  a  division  at  this  rate  and  over  such  a 
distance  appears  even  more  extraordinary  when  one  bears  in 
mind  the  fact  that  a  single  division,  properly  accommodated 
aboard  transcontinental  trains,  occupied  half  the  total  sleep- 
ing car  equipment  at  the  disposal  of  the  military  authorities. 
At  the  time  when  the  Ninety-first  Division  was  rolling  east- 
ward on  half  a  hundred  heavy  trains,  at  least  three  other  divi- 
sions were  in  process  of  moving  to  the  ports  of  embarkation. 
Since  sleeping  cars  and  berths  are  inelastic,  the  simultaneous 
transportation  of  four  or  fite  army  divisions  in  equipment  with 
capacity  for  only  two,  verges  on  the  impossible.  Such  feats 
were  made  practicable  only  by  the  most  careful,  systematic, 
and  ingenious  manipulation  of  the  available  rolling  stock. 

During  the  time  of  heaviest  troop  travel  in  1918  there  were 
approximately  6,000  Pullman  sleepers  in  the  United  States. 
This  equipment  was  none  too  large  to  accommodate  the  com- 
mercial demand;  but  the  United  States  Railroad  Administra- 
tion, which  in  January,  1918,  had  taken  over  the  operation 
of  the  American  railways,  managed,  by  cutting  down  the 
sleeping  car  accommodations  on  the  regular  trains  and  by  dis- 
couraging all  but  the  most  urgent  business  travel  on  the  part 
of  civilians,  to  make  available  for  troop  movements  about 
1,500  Pullmans,  leaving  4,500  sleeping  cars  for  the  use  of 
the  traveling  public.  Those  1,500  sleepers  were  the  maximum 
wrung  from  the  public  during  a  time  when  every  available 
transport  was  being  loaded  to  capacity  with  American  soldiers. 
Oftener,  the  sleeping  cars  at  the  disposal  of  the  troop-move- 
ment office  did  not  exceed  1,200.  Since  such  a  division  as  the 
Thirty-second,  whose  travel  we  have  described,  occupied  582 
sleepers  (and  this  division  was  by  no  means  at  full  strength 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  83 

when  it  traveled  to  Camp  Merritt),  it  is  evident  that  the 
movement  of  four  or  five  divisions  at  once  taxed  the  resource- 
fulness of  those  at  headquarters. 

How  was  this  car-equipment  problem  solved  *?  By  interlacing 
long-haul  and  short-haul  movements.  When  four  divisions 
were  embarking  at  once,  an  observer  at  the  port  would  have 
noted  that  two  of  them  were  coming  in  from  far-away  camps 
and  two  from  camps  near  at  hand.  It  is  obvious  that  a  division 
proceeding  to  New  York  from  Camp  Sherman  in  Ohio,  an 
overnight  ride,  required  a  smaller  amount  of  rolling  stock 
than  was  necessary  for  the  transportation  of  a  division  across 
the  continent  from  Camp  Kearney  or  Camp  Lewis.  A  move- 
ment of  the  latter  sort  tied  up  equipment  for  at  least  two 
weeks — one  week  for  the  movement  of  the  empty  cars  to  the 
Far  West  and  another  for  the  loaded  travel  back  again.  The 
first  trains  of  a  divisional  movement  from  Camp  Sherman, 
Ohio,  or  Camp  Lee,  Virginia,  couft  travel  to  the  port,  dis- 
charge their  passengers  and  return  their  empty  cars  to  camp 
before  many  additional  trains  had  loaded. 

The  plan  was,  then,  to  sandwich  short  hauls  between  long 
hauls.  Sleeping  car  equipment  which  had  brought  troops  from 
the  Pacific  coast  would  be  dispatched,  immediately  after  un- 
loading, to  a  camp  in  the  East  or  Southeast.  When  it  had 
returned  to  the  port,  it  would  be  sent  out  to  a  greater  distance. 
Overseas  movements  from  the  Pacific  coast  were  few,  com- 
pared with  those  from  the  interior  sections  of  the  country; 
hence  the  sleeping  car  shortage  was  never  so  serious  actually 
as  it  was  on  paper.  Up  to  the  time  the  armistice  was 
signed  the  railroads  had  hauled  nearly  50,000  sleeping  cars 
loaded  with  troops.  It  is  evident  that  during  the  period  of 
active  hostilities  every  one  of  the  1,500  troop  sleepers  in  the 
army  equipment  averaged  between  forty-five  and  fifty  loaded 
trips.  Since  all  the  heavy  travel  came  within  the  last  twelve 
months  of  this  period,  each  car  averaged  four  loaded  trips  a 
month — a  fact  which  testifies  eloquently  to  the  efficiency  with 
which  the  equipment  was  handled. 

The  troops  generally  traveled  in  sleeping  cars  of  the  so- 


84  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

called  tourist  class.  These  cars  materialized  largely  after  war 
had  come.  In  April,  1917,  there  were  only  some  400  tourist 
sleepers  in  the  United  States.  They  had  been  operated  prin- 
cipally on  the  western  trunk  lines,  for  the  convenience  of  land- 
seekers  going  into  the  developing  regions  of  the  West.  Travel 
in  a  tourist  car,  rating  as  second-class,  was  not  so  costly  as  in 
the  standard  Pullman,  although  the  two  cars  are  essentially 
alike  except  that  the  Pullman  is  somewhat  the  more  luxurious 
in  its  appointments.  To  meet  the  war  emergency,  the  Pullman 
Company  converted  1,100  of  its  standard  cars  into  tourist 
sleepers.  The  conversion  amounted  to  little  more  than  the 
removal  of  fine  carpets  and  hangings;  also,  for  the  romantic 
appellations  that  once  graced  the  sides  of  these  sleepers,  the 
painter's  brush  substituted  prosaic  serial  numbers,  thus  answer- 
ing the  poet's  rhetorical  question  to  the  effect  that  in  the  cost 
of  railroad  travel,  at  any  rate,  there  may  be  something  in  a 
name.  Each  sleeping  car  furnished  to  troops  carried  a  uni- 
formed porter  to  minister  to  the  wants  of  the  passengers. 

In  the  spring  of  1917  the  Pullman  Company  prepared  for 
the  coming  military  travel  by  equipping,  as  an  experiment, 
four  troop  kitchen  cars.  The  company  did  this  by  remodeling 
club  smoking  cars  of  the  type  used  in  the  better  trains.  When 
ready  for  service,  each  kitchen  car  contained  an  equipment  con- 
sisting of  two  large  kitchen  ranges,  a  warming  oven,  a  long 
serving  counter,  an  ice  box  to  hold  2,200  pounds  of  meat,  an 
extra  large  pantry,  and  additional  water  tanks  with  an  air- 
compressor  system  for  forcing  water  into  them,  so  as  to  save 
the  labor  of  watering  the  cars  by  hand.  In  each  car  there  was 
also  a  commodious  space  for  the  dry  storage  of  such  food 
products  as  could  be  so  kept.  These  cars  proved  that  they 
could  feed  800  men  in  an  hour  and  a  half,  the  food  being 
taken  through  the  train  by  squads  of  servers.  Since  the  average 
troop  train  carried  fewer  than  450  men,  the  kitchen  car  was 
of  ample  capacity. 

The  experimental  cars  were  built  in  the  hope  that  the  Gov- 
ernment would  try  them  out  and  order  their  general  adoption. 
The  Pullman  Company  offered  a  plan  to  equip  fifty  such  cars. 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  85 

or  enough  to  provide  cooked  food  for  the  entire  military  trans- 
portation. This  plan,  however,  was  never  adopted.  The  com- 
pany certainly  did  not  expect  to  operate  these  cars  free  of 
charge ;  and,  if  the  war  were  to  continue  as  long  as  the  country 
expected  it  would,  the  use  of  a  large  equipment  of  them  would 
run  into  a  sizable  bill.  The  railroads  were  required,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  furnish  baggage  cars  free  for  passenger  trains. 
Consequently,  the  Army  adopted  the  policy  of  equipping  its 
free  baggage  cars  as  train  kitchens  by  installing  in  them  the 
ordinary  army  field  ranges. 

The  Pullman  Company  did,  to  be  sure,  supply  the  troop 
movement  with  numerous  cooking  facilities.  In  addition  to  the 
four  special  cars,  it  put  into  service  nine  kitchen  cars  of  a  type 
which  had  already  been  in  use.  They  contained  fourteen  sleep- 
ing sections,  seven  on  each  side.  At  the  end  was  a  large  space 
outfitted  as  a  kitchen,  with  a  range  and  other  facilities.  These 
cars  could  feed  from  200  to  250  men  within  a  reasonable 
time.  Also,  the  company  went  down  into  Mexico  and  took 
from  the  demoralized  transportation  system  of  that  unhappy 
country  three  cars  of  a  special  type,  known  as  hotel  cars,  which 
it  had  operated  there.  These  contained  only  twelve  sleeping 
sections,  and  considerable  room  was  left  for  a  well-equipped 
kitchen.  The  hotel  car,  also,  could  cook  for  250  men.  Thus 
the  Pullman  Company  supplied,  in  all,  sixteen  special  cooking 
cars  for  troops.  This  equipment  was  given  constant  use.  The 
corporation  supplied  the  cooks  for  these  cars,  but  the  troops 
themselves  furnished  the  food  supplies. 

The  commoner  makeshift  was  the  baggage-kitchen  car.  The 
Army  devised  the  relatively  safe  method  of  installing  field 
ranges  in  baggage  cars  by  setting  each  range  down  on  a  thick 
layer  of  earth  shoveled  upon  the  floor  of  the  car.  Sometimes 
the  company  cooks  were  careless  about  following  directions, 
and  numerous  fires  in  the  baggage  cars  of  troop  trains  were 
the  result.  The  cooking  in  these  cars  was  done  by  the  cooks 
of  the  traveling  units;  so  that  the  troops  subsisted  exactly  as 
at  camps  and  on  long  marches.  One  dusky  magician  of  the 
stewpan,  after  being  rescued  from  a  charred  and  still  burning 


86  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

baggage  car,  told  his  commanding  officer  that  he  had  discov- 
ered in  that  fiery  experience  why  his  cabin  in  the  South  had 
twice  burned  down.  Each  field  range  was  supposed  to  rest  on 
a  sheet  of  tin,  which  in  turn  was  superimposed  upon  a  layer 
of  earth.  This  cook  had  reversed  the  procedure  in  the  baggage 
car — no  doubt  following  previous  practice  at  home — by  put- 
ting down  the  tin  first,  covering  it  with  a  layer  of  earth,  and 
placing  the  bottomless  stove  on  top  of  that.  In  a  short  time 
the  car  was  on  fire. 

No  refrigeration  was  provided  on  the  baggage  cars,  and  for 
fresh  meats  and  vegetables  the  mess  sergeants  had  to  depend 
upon  supplies  purchased  en  route.  Whenever  an  organization 
traveled  without  cooks,  as  casual  companies,  recruits,  and  inter- 
camp  troops  often  did,  the  soldiers  carried  rations  with  them, 
and  the  train  commanders  telegraphed  ahead  for  hot  coffee  or 
other  readily  supplied  foods.  Such  arrangements  were  particu- 
larly frequent  during  demobilization,  when  troops  disembark- 
ing at  New  York  traveled  westward  principally  as  casuals. 
The  cookless  trains  fell  under  the  special  care  of  the  Red 
Cross,  whose  terminal  and  junction  refreshment  stations  ren- 
dered valuable  assistance  in  keeping  our  traveling  soldiers 
from  going  hungry. 

The  equipment  division  of  the  troop-movement  office,  origi- 
nally called  the  Pullman  division,  manipulated  all  sleeping 
car  and  kitchen  car  equipment  for  troops  and,  after  the  early 
autumn  of  1918,  all  coach  equipment  as  well,  the  Railroad 
Administration  having  thrown  all  troop-train  rolling  stock  into 
a  single  pool.  The  division,  working  in  close  coordination 
with  the  other  branches  of  the  office,  was  able  to  conduct  dis- 
tribution in  time  to  meet  any  movement  with  the  equipment 
which  it  required. 

The  troop-movement  office  was  able  to  plan  considerably 
ahead.  The  Operations  Division  of  the  General  Staff  aimed, 
in  issuing  its  transportation  orders,  to  keep  a  full  month  ahead 
of  the  actual  movements.  The  principal  officers  in  charge  of 
transportation  and  its  related  activities  in  the  Army  met  once 
a  month  and  prepared  a  travel  schedule  for  the  following 


Photo  by   Signal   Corps 

ARMY  SLEEPING  CAR.  NOTE  ABSENCE  OF  CURTAINS 
AND  PARTITIONS 


Photo  by  International  Film  Service 

LOADING  A  BAGGAGE-KITCHEN  CAR 


Photo  by    Vnderzi'ced   y   I  nduzcood.   N.    Y. 

A  UNIT'S  BAGGAGE  INCLUDED  ITS  VEHICLES 


Photo  by  Paul   Thompson 


LOADING  A  TROOP  COACH 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  87 

month.  Having  fairly  definite  knowledge  of  the  tonnage  that 
would  be  available  at  the  ports  of  embarkation  for  the  ensuing 
thirty  days  and  of  what  the  available  tonnage  would  be  on 
each  day,  the  Operations  Division  prepared  a  table  of  trans- 
portation priorities,  covering  the  order  in  which  the  units  for 
overseas  should  come  to  the  ports.  The  state  of  preparedness 
of  various  units  for  expeditionary  service  was  known  through 
reports  which  the  Operations  Division  received  from  the 
Adjutant  General.  Consider,  for  a  specific  example,  the  port 
of  New  York.  Just  enough  prepared  troops  were  ordered  to 
the  port  each  month  to  fill  the  transports  which  would  sail 
that  month  and  leave  in  addition  a  reserve  of  60,000  men  at 
the  two  embarkation  centers.  Camp  Mills  and  Camp  Merritt. 
This  reserve  was  always  maintained,  so  that  if  there  should 
be  a  transportation  failure  in  the  United  States,  due  to 
storms,  floods,  earthquakes,  or  other  unforeseen  cataclysms, 
the  transports  coming  in  for  troops  would  neither  be  de- 
layed nor  have  to  sail  empty,  but  could  continue  to  draw 
their  human  cargoes  from  the  two  embarkation  camps.  The 
Operations  Division  notified  each  prospective  traveling  unit  of 
its  place  in  the  priorities,  but  ordered  it  to  report  its  final 
readiness  for  entraining  to  the  Transportation  Service  itself, 
which  actually  ordered  the  entrainment  by  date  and  hour. 

The  equipment  division  of  the  troop-movement  section 
knew  well  in  advance,  then,  to  what  regions  it  must  divert  its 
limited  rolling  stock.  It  accomplished  its  distributions  by 
means  of  orders  sent  to  the  departmental  traffic  agents,  who 
prepared  the  detailed  orders  for  the  railroad  lines  within  their 
jurisdiction.  The  equipment  division  in  Washington  was  the 
propelling  force  behind  this  distribution;  the  actual  pull  for 
the  cars  came  from  the  general  transportation  agents  at  the 
camps  where  troops  were  to  entrain.  This  double  control  re- 
sulted always  in  placing  the  equipment  on  time  where  it  was 
needed.  The  efforts  of  the  camp  agent,  it  should  be  added,  were 
sometimes  quite  as  effective  in  securing  cars  as  the  original 
orders  from  Washington. 

The  troop-movement  agent  at  each  camp  received  periodi- 


88  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

cal  notification  of  what  units  would  be  expected  to  entrain  at 
his  camp.  As  the  date  of  entraining  drew  near,  he  learned 
from  the  camp  quartermaster  at  what  hours  the  troops  would 
be  ready  to  go,  how  many  would  entrain,  what  personal  or 
regimental  baggage  they  would  carry,  what  would  be  the  num- 
ber of  their  vehicles,  cannon,  and  animals,  and  all  other  de- 
tails which  would  enable  him  to  estimate  how  much  and  what 
sorts  of  railway  equipment  would  be  required  for  each  train. 
When  he  had  these  facts  in  hand,  it  was  his  duty  to  keep 
track  of  the  railway  equipment  and  see  that  it  got  to  the  camp 
on  time.  If  he  experienced  difficulties,  he  could  appeal  to 
Washington,  where  resided  the  mandatory  power. 

When  the  equipment  arrived,  the  camp  agent  inspected  it. 
He  could  reject  any  that  was  unsatisfactory.  Before  any  troops 
entrained,  another  inspection  of  equipment  was  conducted  by 
the  camp  transportation  agent  jointly  with  the  officer  desig- 
nated to  be  train  commander.  The  commanders  of  traveling 
units  had  it  within  their  province  to  say  what  units  should 
travel  on  each  train  and  in  what  order  they  should  occupy  the 
train  from  front  to  rear.  As  a  rule,  trains  were  loaded  in 
accordance  with  that  tenet  of  military  doctrine  which  pre- 
scribes that  tactical  organizations  shall  not  be  broken  on  the 
march.  When  an  organization  moved  on  several  trains,  the 
policy  was  to  keep  these  trains  together,  instead  of  splitting 
them  up  by  inserting  the  trains  of  other  organizations.  Also, 
as  a  rule,  a  train  was  not  divided  between  two  units,  but  was 
occupied  by  one  exclusively. 

A  troop  train  usually  carried  at  least  one  freight  car  for 
baggage  and  equipment.  In  the  late  fall  of  1917,  Canada  issued 
permission  for  the  passage  of  American  military  trains  across 
Dominion  territory,  and  this  favor  gave  us  the  advantage 
of  using  the  three  trunk  lines  that  connect  Chicago  and  Buffalo 
along  the  north  shore  of  Lake  Erie.  On  these  and  other  north- 
em  routes,  the  winter  weather,  particularly  that  of  1917-1918, 
required  the  thorough  heating  of  trains,  which  was  impossible 
if  freight  cars  were  interposed  between  engine  and  passenger 
cars.  The  winter  trains  therefore  usually  carried  their  freight 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  89 

cars  at  the  rear,  except  in  states  where  that  arrangement  was 
forbidden  by  law.  The  presence  of  freight  cars  in  troop  trains 
necessarily  slowed  down  the  speed  of  travel,  but  this  was  not 
regarded  as  a  disadvantage.  In  fact,  troop  trains  were  usually 
held  down  to  an  average  running  time  of  twenty  miles  an 
hour,  partly  for  safety  in  operation  and  partly  to  make  the 
transportation  problem  easier  and  prevent  congestions  which, 
if  trains  were  moving  into  terminals  at  high  speed,  might  in 
a  few  hours  wax  to  unmanageable  proportions. 

The  transportation  agent  at  the  camp,  then,  was  in  charge  of 
the  loading  of  all  trains,  jointly  with  the  camp  quartermaster 
and  the  train  commanders.  When  a  troop  body  of  considerable 
size,  such  as  a  division,  moved  out  of  camp,  the  loading  fol- 
lowed a  systematic  course.  First,  in  box  cars  locked  and  sealed 
was  loaded  company  property  not  needed  in  transit.  Then  came 
the  loading  of  guns,  artillery  carriages,  pontoons,  wagons, 
ambulances,  and  other  vehicles,  in  gondola  cars  or  on  flat  cars. 
The  forage  for  the  animals  was  loaded  in  box  cars.  On  the 
troop  train  itself  was  loaded  all  checkable  baggage — arms, 
rations,  and  the  like — for  use  en  route.  These  properties  were 
placed  in  the  baggage  and  kitchen  cars  and  kept  under  guard 
from  beginning  to  end  of  the  trip.  The  animals,  last  of 
the  freight  to  be  loaded,  were  put  into  stock  cars,  accompanied 
by  soldiers  to  take  care  of  them.  Now  all  was  ready  for  the 
troops  themselves  to  entrain  in  coaches  or  sleepers. 

Troop  trains  awaiting  loads  were  backed  upon  convenient 
sidings  a  short  time  before  the  loading  was  to  begin.  The 
transportation  agent,  with  a  loading  schedule  in  his  hand, 
chalked  on  the  side  of  each  car,  near  the  steps,  at  both  ends, 
what  organization  should  occupy  that  car  and  the  number  of 
men  it  would  accommodate.  On  day  coaches  the  troops  were 
loaded  three  men  to  each  double  seat;  on  the  sleepers  they 
rode  three  to  a  section,  two  men  occupying  the  lower  berth  at 
night  and  one  man  the  upper.  Troops  marched  to  the  railroad 
not  more  than  fifteen  minutes  before  their  train's  departure. 
Remarkable  facility  was  attained  in  loading  troop  trains.  At 
the  embarkation  camps,  trains  were  frequently  loaded  within 


90  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ten  minutes ;  and  the  utmost  allowance  for  loading,  anywhere, 
was  fifteen  minutes. 

The  banner  achievement  in  loading  was  that  of  the  Eighth 
Division,  Regulars,  at  Camp  Fremont,  California,  in  seven 
days,  beginning  October  18,  1918.  According  to  the  report  by 
the  entraining  officer  of  this  division,  the  first  train  left  the 
camp  at  9.00  a.m.,  October  18,  followed  by  the  others  at 
regular  one-and-one-half -hour  intervals  until  4.30  p.m.  This 
procedure  was  repeated  daily  for  seven  days.  The  last  train 
left  promptly  at  4.30  o'clock  on  October  24.  The  entrain- 
ing officer  reported:  "The  splendid  cooperation  of  all  units 
and  train  commanders  and  quartermasters  made  it  possible 
to  dispatch  all  of  the  forty-two  trains  on  the  minute  spe- 
cified, except  two,  one  of  which  was  held  four  minutes  in 
order  to  remove  baggage  of  sick  officer  taken  off  train  just  prior 
to  departure,  and  the  other  of  which  was  delayed  five  minutes 
to  repair  minor  leaks  in  water  connections.  According  to  A.  R.  A. 
officials,  the  Eighth  Division  was  the  first  division  moved  in 
the  United  States  with  100-per-cent  entrainment.  Due  per- 
haps partly  to  a  competition  inaugurated  among  train  com- 
manders, some  very  fast  time  was  made  in  entraining;  few 
trains  after  the  second  day  required  more  than  five  minutes 
from  the  time  of  arrival  of  troops  in  area  to  the  last  man 
entrained."  The  officer  cited  specific  instances  of  trains  loaded 
in  as  brief  a  time  as  two  minutes  and  fifteen  seconds. 

Soldiers  are  thirsty  men.  In  addition  to  seeing  to  it  that  all 
drinking  equipment  was  in  good  condition,  cleaned,  iced,  and 
watered,  the  railroad  agent  at  each  camp  had  the  duty  of 
supplying  additional  drinking  facilities.  On  the  platform  of 
every  day  coach  carried  on  an  American  troop  train,  and  on 
the  platform  of  every  second  sleeping  car,  was  a  barrel  filled 
with  pure  drinking  water. 

Each  evening  the  transportation  agent  at  everv^  principal 
camp  telegraphed  in  cipher  to  the  central  troop-movement 
office  in  Washington  an  account  of  railway  departures  from 
his  station  during  the  preceding  twenty-four  hours,  the  names 
of  those  organizations  which  were  to  move  within  the  ensuing 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  91 

twenty-four  hours,  and  the  troop  strength  still  left  in  camp. 
In  September,  1917,  orders  went  to  the  camp  transportation 
agents  to  keep  running  diaries  of  the  principal  events  occurring 
in  camp,  these  to  be  forwarded  to  the  troop-movement  office 
in  Washington  at  regular  intervals.  These  narratives  not  only 
gave  the  central  office  a  thorough  knowledge  of  conditions  at 
each  camp,  thus  enabling  them  to  act  intelligently  in  matters 
of  transportation  affecting  the  camp,  but  it  also  put  them  in 
intimate  touch  with  the  spirit  of  the  Army  and  built  within  the 
transportation  organization  an  enthusiasm  and  morale  that 
could  scarcely  have  come  from  any  other  source.  The  execu- 
tives of  troop  transportation,  chained  to  their  desks  and  tele- 
phones in  Washington  by  a  business  which  permitted  not  an 
instant's  respite  throughout  the  whole  period  of  hostilities,  be- 
came by  this  means  almost  as  familiar  with  the  military  plant 
as  if  they  had  spent  time  traveling  from  camp  to  camp  and 
inspecting  conditions. 

When  a  train  started  out  from  a  camp  loaded  with  troops, 
it  followed  a  definite  route  to  its  destination.  What  road  the 
train  would  traverse  from  a  junction  point  on  through  the 
next  stage  of  its  journey  was  not  left  to  chance  or  to  the  state 
of  traffic.  Every  arrangement  had  been  made  in  advance  for 
the  progress  of  that  train  from  point  of  origin  to  terminal. 
This  important  department  of  operation  was  in  the  hands  of 
another  division  of  the  troop-movement  office,  known  as  the 
routing  section. 

Proper  routing  was  important,  for  more  reasons  than  one, 
and  it  demanded  in  the  routing  officials  a  high  degree  of 
operating  skill.  The  obvious  benefit  arising  from  good  routing 
was  the  avoidance  of  congestion  on  the  most  heavily  traveled 
roads.  The  chief  concern  of  the  routing  officer  was  directed 
not  so  much  to  the  more  remote  outlying  railroads,  which  could 
handle  their  relatively  infrequent  troop  trains  without  dis- 
turbance to  regular  traffic,  as  to  the  lines  that  converged  upon 
the  ports  of  embarkation,  where,  in  early  1918,  the  principal 
concentrations  of  troops  were  beginning  to  occur.  The  routing 
official  had  to  direct  and  distribute  the  flow  of  trains  into  these 


92  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

terminal  channels  so  that  the  incoming  movement  would  not 
choke  any  one  of  them. 

In  manipulating  the  troop  traffic,  the  routing  officer  also 
had  to  keep  a  watchful  eye  upon  the  movement  of  freight 
toward  the  ocean  terminals.  Throughout  the  war,  freight 
traffic  was  a  source  of  much  greater  embarrassment  to  the 
railroads  than  troop  traffic,  although,  as  we  shall  see  later 
on,  the  Government  did  eventually  untangle  the  freight 
congestion. 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  example  of  the  coordinated 
handling  of  military  freight  and  passengers  occurred  at  the 
crossing  of  the  Potomac  River  at  Washington.  Here,  in  the 
shadow  of  the  Washington  Monument,  the  whole  north-and- 
south  transportation  system  of  the  Middle  and  South  Atlantic 
seaboards  was  pinched  into  two  tracks.  The  system  tapped 
territory  as  far  west  as  New  Orleans  and  as  far  south  as  Key 
West.  This  territory  was  the  principal  troop-training  area  in 
the  United  States.  The  many  camps  therein  consumed  an 
enormous  volume  of  supplies,  so  that  there  was  a  heavy 
and  continuous  freight  movement  southward.  The  area  was 
also  a  considerable  munitions-producing  section.  Probably 
more  troops  traveled  through  Washington  than  through  any 
other  interior  crossing  or  railroad  center;  and  the  transit  of 
freight  up  and  down  the  Atlantic  seaboard  section  was  always 
heavy.  Into  Washington,  too,  flowed  coal  from  the  West 
Virginia  mining  regions.  Northward,  between  Washington  and 
the  port  at  New  York,  were  located  some  of  the  principal 
munition  and  ship-building  plants  of  the  United  States,  as 
well  as  such  huge  purely  military  establishments  as  the 
Aberdeen  Proving  Grounds  in  Maryland  and  the  Edge  wood 
Chemical  Warfare  Arsenal  near  by.  It  is  evident,  therefore, 
that  not  only  was  the  troop  traffic  heavy  between  Washington 
and  New  York,  but  that  the  freight  traffic,  too,  was  a  thing  of 
impressive  proportions. 

Now,  between  Washington  and  New  York  there  are  two 
railroad  trunk  lines,  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  and  the  Pennsyl- 
vania. The  Pennsylvania  is  a  four-track  system  over  much  of 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  93 

the  route.  The  B.  &  O.  is  double-tracked  over  most  of  its  right 
of  way.  Prior  to  1917,  the  Pennsylvania,  though  it  handled 
a  great  freight  traffic,  was  predominantly  a  passenger  railroad, 
its  passenger  trains  considerably  outnumbering  those  of  the 
B.  &  O.  between  New  York  and  Washington.  The  rout- 
ing section  of  the  troop-movement  office  simply  interchanged 
these  characteristics.  It  employed  the  B.  &  O.  as  its  pas- 
senger road,  thus  freeing  the  four  tracks  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vania for  the  accommodation  of  the  great  freight  traffic. 
When  the  embarkation  movement  was  at  its  height,  from 
twenty  to  twenty-four  troop  trains  on  the  average  were  run- 
ning daily  from  Washington  to  New  York.  Up  to  the  number 
of  eighteen,  these  were  invariably  routed  over  the  B.  &  O., 
the  Pennsylvania  taking  merely  the  excess.  This  example  was 
typical  of  the  war  method  of  employing  trackage  for  maximum 
service,  regardless  of  its  ownership  and  traditions. 

The  routing  of  military  traffic  in  the  West  was  affected 
by  a  historical  consideration  which  touched  the  origin  of 
certain  of  the  railroads.  When,  on  January  1,  1917,  the 
transportation  contract  system  gave  way  to  a  more  scientific 
method  of  handling  troops  on  the  rails,  the  Government  agreed 
( 1 )  to  use  all  railroads  fairly  and  impartially  in  the  event  of 
war  and  (2)  to  pay  for  its  passengers  the  lawful  commercial 
fares  with  a  five-per-cent  deduction  up  to  a  specified  gross 
maximum  deduction.  In  the  West  there  were  certain  railroads 
known  as  land-grant  roads.  To  encourage  the  opening  up  of 
the  West  after  the  Civil  War,  the  Government  had  offered 
the  pioneer  builders  of  railroads  large  tracts  of  land  in  the 
regions  tapped  by  the  lines.  The  land-grant  arrangements  had 
been  sharply  attacked  in  the  decade  prior  to  the  World  War, 
because  the  grants  had  become  enormously  valuable.  Other 
pioneer  rail  construction  had  been  financed  by  government 
bonds.  There  was,  perhaps,  a  general  feeling  that  the  Gov- 
ernment had  been  unduly  generous  in  its  encouragement  of 
western  railroads.  However,  in  the  charters  of  these  land- 
grant   and   bond-aided   roads   were   certain   provisions   ordi- 


94  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

narily  overlooked  in  times  of  peace — the  Government's  quid 
pro  quo. 

When  the  World  War  came  upon  us  and  we,  as  a  nation, 
were  faced  with  the  expense  of  transporting  troops  by  tens  of 
millions,  then  these  half -forgotten  charter  provisions  became 
of  the  utmost  practical  importance,  for  they  provided  in  per- 
petuity that  the  land-grant  and  bond-aided  roads  should  haul 
the  military  passengers  of  the  United  States  at  greatly  reduced 
rates,  or  even  free  of  charge.  The  land-grant  roads  could 
charge,  at  most,  only  half  fare  for  troops.  Competing  western 
lines,  built  later,  had  met  these  troop  rates  in  their  tariffs  on 
file  with  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  with  only  the 
exception  that  no  competing  line  gave  free  transportation.  In 
the  agreement  of  January  i,  1917,  all  of  these  reduced  rates 
were  continued,  and  the  further  five-per-cent  deduction  was 
also  allowed.  The  Government  did  not  actually  enforce  the 
free-transportation  obligations  upon  any  of  the  land-grant 
roads,  having  mercy  in  view  of  the  unprecedented  military 
traffic  in  the  recent  war;  but  in  some  instances  it  did  secure 
rates  well  under  the  half  fares  generally  charged. 

The  land-grant-railroad  situation  inevitably  had  great  sig- 
nificance for  the  routing  office  in  Washington.  Whenever  it 
was  possible,  consistently  with  prompt  dispatch,  the  office 
routed  troop  trains  so  as  to  take  the  greatest  possible  advan- 
tage of  the  land-grant  fares.  As  a  result,  much  of  our  troop 
transportation  in  the  West  in  1917-1919  was  handled  by  the 
railroads  at  less  than  cost.  By  the  time  demobilization  ended, 
the  foresight  of  the  empire  builders  of  the  mid-nineteenth 
century  had  been  justified.  Reckoning  in  the  increment  in  the 
value  of  the  Government's  own  lands  in  the  West,  we  find  the 
total  cost-saving  in  troop  transportation  over  the  aided  roads 
to  have  been  a  sum  considerably  greater  than  the  value  of  the 
land  grants  at  the  time  when  the  railroads  were  opening  up 
the  West  for  colonization.  The  war  wiped  the  slate  clean. 

Often,  too,  money  could  be  saved  in  the  routing  of  troops 
by  following  the  commercial  ticketing  arrangements  of  the 
railroads.  The  prudent  traveler  has  sometimes  noticed  that 


Photo  by  Paul  Verkin 


FOOD  STORES  FOR  A  JOURNEY 


From   The  War  College  Collection 

ARTILLERY  TRAVELED  APART  FROM  INFANTRY 


Photo  by   Central  News  Photo  Service,  Inc. 

DRAFT  TROOPS  IN  COACH 


Photo  from  American  Red  Cross 

A  WELCOME  BREAK  IN  THE  TEDIUM  OF  TRAVEL 


THE  SYSTEM  AT  WORK  95 

he  can  ride  more  cheaply  to  a  given  destination  upon  one 
railroad  and  its  connections  than  upon  another.  The  routing 
section  of  the  troop-movement  office  was  aware  of  all  these 
travel  economies,  and  invariably  it  routed  a  train  according 
to  the  lowest  ticketing  rate,  except  when  it  was  necessary  to 
sacrifice  this  policy  to  avoid  railroad  congestion. 

The  basis  of  fares  during  much  of  the  earlier  part  of  the 
war  was  approximately  two  cents  a  mile  for  parties  of  ten 
or  more,  less  the  five-per-cent  and  other  deductions.  In  June, 
1918,  the  Railroad  Administration  abolished  party  fares  and 
carried  troops  on  a  basis  of  three  cents  a  mile  per  capita,  less 
the  deductions.  These  deductions,  combined  with  a  thrifty 
policy  in  routing  the  trains,  saved  the  country  millions  of 
dollars  in  its  war  transportation  bill. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT 

UP  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice  the  Army  threw  a 
veil  of  impenetrable  secrecy  about  its  travel.  Even  the 
railroad  men  secured  only  sufficient  information  to 
enable  them  to  operate  the  trains  intelligently.  Originating 
orders  for  the  travel  of  troops  were  usually  oral  rather  than 
written.  To  prevent  possible  leaks  in  information  through  the 
commercial  telephone  exchanges,  a  direct  and  exclusive  private 
line  was  installed  between  the  troop-movement  office  and  the 
War  Department,  and  the  orders  which  resulted  in  travel 
usually  went  across  this  line.  The  canteen  service  of  the  Red 
Cross  received  notice  when  a  troop  train  was  to  stop  where 
the  men  could  be  fed,  but  only  briefly  in  advance  of  the  actual 
arrival  of  the  train;  and  when  a  military  train  was  traveling  to 
a  port  of  embarkation,  not  even  the  Red  Cross  knew  of  its 
movements. 

As  an  aid  to  this  secrecy,  the  troop-movement  office  adopted 
an  elaborate  cipher  code  (the  invention  of  Mr.  J.  Edwin 
Dempsey,  a  telegraphic  cipher  expert  of  Chicago),  in  which  all 
of  its  confidential  orders  were  sent.  The  code  was  published 
in  a  small  leather-bound  volume  and  placed  in  the  hands  of 
every  man  who  held  an  executive  post  in  the  military  trans- 
portation system. 

Ciphers  interest  the  inquisitive  mind.  The  following  jumble 
of  words  is  a  transcript  of  an  actual  Dempsey  code  message 
sent  out  from  the  troop-movement  office  during  the  early 
autumn  of  1918: 

"MAIN  89  WHITING  EIGHTH  REVERSED  AMASSING 
FREMONT  BARBETTA  WHIST  CLEAVING  HEFTMAN 
RENNISH     HEFTMAN     RENOMED     APATHY     STRIVING 


AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT  97 

GARLAND  SUMAGE  GARRED  SIMMERED  FUMING  SO- 
BERING FULTUM  SWARDED  UTICA  SPRIGGED  GARISH 
SMILED  SFIBRARONO. " 

A  free  translation  of  this  message  is  as  follows : 

"Subject:  Movement  of  the  Eighth  Division.  Following  is 
the  routing  for  certain  trains  of  the  Eighth  Division  from 
Camp  Fremont,  California,  to  Camp  Mills,  Long  Island. 
Movement  to  consist  of  three  trains  scheduled  to  leave  Octo- 
ber 24  and  three  trains  October  25.  Tourist  sleeper  equipment 
for  all.  Route  of  trains:  Southern  Pacific  to  Ogden,  Union 
Pacific  to  Omaha,  Illinois  Central  to  Chicago,  Michigan  Cen- 
tral to  Buffalo,  West  Shore  to  Utica,  New  York,  Ontario  & 
Western  to  New  York  City,  Long  Island  Railroad  to  destina- 
tion. Henceforth  the  code  word  for  this  movement  will  be 
Sfibrarono." 

Now  for  the  explanation,  which  will  incidentally  throw 
some  light  upon  the  system  of  handling  troop  traffic.  The 
message  begins  with  the  number  "Main  89,"  suggestive  of  the 
telephone  directory.  For  the  sake  of  both  secrecy  and  brevity, 
every  principal  movement  of  troops  received  its  serial  number 
from  the  troop-movement  office.  "Main  89"  was  the  serial 
number  applied  to  the  entire  movement  of  the  Eighth  Division 
from  its  training  camp  in  California,  Camp  Fremont.  The 
movement  in  its  entirety  consisted  of  forty-two  trains,  but  the 
whole  was  known  to  the  train  dispatcher  simply  as  "Main  89." 
The  sender  of  the  message  might  have  obtained  even  greater 
secrecy  by  calling  the  movement  "Main  Pardah,"  the  word 
"Pardah"  being  the  Dempsey  code  word  for  the  numeral  89. 

The  third  word  of  the  message  was  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant, for  it  indicated  instantly  to  the  recipient  the  character 
of  the  message.  In  the  Dempsey  code,  "Whiting"  meant  that 
the  following  sentences  referred  to  a  route  schedule.  Other 
color  words  in  the  code  meant  messages  of  other  purport.  If 
the  message  were  a  report  from  a  camp  agent  relating  to  the 
departure  of  troops  from  his  camp,  the  serial  number  of  the 
movement,  which  always  headed  the  message,  would  be  fol- 


98 


THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 


lowed  by  the  word  "Black."  Every  person  concerned  who 
handled  this  message  would  call  it  a  "Black  report,"  and 
would  know  without  deciphering  it  that  it  related  to  trains 
starting  out.  A  "Gold  report"  related  to  the  delivery  of  a 
troop  train  from  one  railroad  to  another  at  a  junction.  A 
"Yellow  report"  was  the  report  of  an  arrival  at  destination. 
"Whiting"  meant  the  routing  of  a  movement  not  yet  begun. 
Here  are  the  six  code  words  which  follow  "Whiting,"  with 
their  translations: 


Eighth 

Eighth 

Reversed 

Division 

Amassing 

Camp 

Fremont 

Fremont 

Barbetta 

California 

Whist 

Camp  Mills,  Long  Island 

Then  came  "Cleaving,"  important  because  it  was  a  key  word. 
An  expert  in  the  code  knew  at  once  that  "Cleaving"  embodied 
the  idea  of  the  make-up  and  the  departure  of  the  movement. 
It  may  be  roughly  translated,  "Movement  scheduled  to  leave 
as  follows." 

Heftman  Three  passenger  trains 

Renmsh  October  24 

Heftman  Three  passenger  trains 

Renamed  October  25 

Apathy  Tourist  sleepers  will  be  provided 

Striving  Southern  Pacific  Railroad 

Garland  Ogden,  Utah 

Sumage  Union  Pacific  Railroad 

Garred  Omaha,  Nebraska 

Simmered  Illinois  Central  Railroad 

Fuming  Chicago 

Sobering  Michigan  Central 

Fultum  Buffalo,  New  York 

Swarded  West  Shore  Railroad 

Utica  Utica,  New  York 

Sprigged  New  York,  Ontario  &  Western  Railroad 

Garish  New  York  City 

Smiled  Long  Island  Railroad 


AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT  99 

Finally  came  the  word  "Sfibrarono."  This  cryptogram  was  a 
key  word  invented  by  the  sender  especially  for  that  message. 
It  was  what  was  known  in  the  transportation  system  as  the 
route  word,  and  it  meant  that  henceforth  all  telegraphed  mes- 
sages relating  to  the  movement  of  these  six  trains  of  the  Eighth 
Division  over  the  route  prescribed  in  their  "Whiting"  message 
must  be  identified  at  the  beginning  of  each  telegram  by  the 
word  "Sfibrarono."  A  cipher  report  of  the  delivery  of  one  of 
these  trains  from,  say,  the  Union  Pacific  to  the  Illinois  Central 
would  read,  "Sfibrarono  Gold,"  etc.  When  the  six  trains  had 
reached  their  destination,  the  word  "Sfibrarono"  would  drop 
out  of  existence. 

The  transportation  of  the  Army  was  an  almost  sheer  addi- 
tion to  the  burden  of  normal  railroad  traffic.  Upon  the  rail- 
road telegraph  system  it  placed  an  excess  load  hardly  less 
staggering.  The  ingenious  Dempsey  code  was  a  great  aid  in 
keeping  the  military-traffic-wire  business  to  a  minimum.  The 
message  quoted  above  contains  thirty  words.  To  have  tele- 
graphed the  same  information  in  plain  English  would  have 
required  nearly  one  hundred.  When  the  armistice  was  signed 
and  there  was  no  longer  the  need  for  secrecy  in  military  move- 
ments, but  when  there  was  still  a  great  army  to  be  demobilized 
and  taken  back  to  its  homes,  the  code  was  continued  in  use 
for  the  sake  of  its  succinctness ;  and  it  remained  as  an  efficient 
transportation  tool  until,  with  the  demobilization  of  the  First 
Division  (the  last  to  return  from  France),  the  great  episode 
in  military  travel  came  to  an  end. 

It  was  the  Eighth  Division  whose  rapid  entrainment  at 
Camp  Fremont  was  commended  by  the  authorities.  The  entire 
division  moved  out  in  seven  days,  beginning  October  18.  Each 
day  six  trains  departed  punctually  on  schedule.  All  available 
routes  were  so  utilized  in  this  movement  as  to  prevent  con- 
gestion on  any  one  of  them.  The  average  run  from  Camp  Fre- 
mont to  Camp  Mills  was  3,444  miles  long.  The  journey  of  the 
Eighth  was  still  more  memorable  because  it  occurred  in  the 
height  of  the  influenza  epidemic.  Many  a  man  was  taken  from 
the  trains  of  the  Eighth  Division  to  hospitals  along  the  route, 


100  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

and  many  a  one  who  entrained  at  Camp  Fremont  was  dead 
before  his  comrades  saw  the  Manhattan  skyline. 

The  avalanche  of  American  troops  upon  the  ports  began 
suddenly.  To  hold  the  German  drive  in  the  spring  of  1918, 
the  British  and  French  armies  exhausted  their  troops  at  a 
ruinous  rate.  The  American  transport  fleet  had  already  grown 
to  considerable  proportions  when  the  arrangement  was  struck 
whereby  the  British  offered  to  turn  over  a  large  portion  of 
their  passenger-carrying  marine  if  we  would  supply  the  men 
to  fill  the  ships.  The  British  agreed  to  transport  overseas  six 
American  divisions.  The  question  became  merely  whether  the 
inland  transportation  system  of  the  United  States  could  move 
the  troops  to  the  seaboard  in  such  numbers  as  to  load  the  ships. 
It  could.  Not  a  transport,  British  or  American,  was  delayed 
for  want  of  passengers;  not  one  left  our  shores  unfilled.  Up 
to  the  1st  of  May,  eight  American  divisions  had  been  trans- 
ported across  the  ocean,  in  part  or  as  wholes.  The  month  of 
May  was  to  witness  the  ferrying  of  nine  others — more  than 
we  had  transported  to  France  during  all  the  previous  months 
of  the  war.  June  saw  seven  more  divisions  embark;  July  six 
others. 

All  this  meant  tremendous  travel  on  the  railroads.  In  Jan- 
uary, before  the  great  embarkation  was  under  way,  398  special 
trains  had  been  operated  for  137,093  passengers.  The  heaviest 
day  was  January  22,  when  26  specials  moved  with  9,459  men. 
The  intercamp  movements  had  greatly  fallen  off  by  this  time : 
during  January  they  required  only  13  special  trains.  In  Febru- 
ary embarkations  were  not  heavy;  but  in  March  the  Third 
Division,  from  Camp  Greene,  North  Carolina,  and  the  Seventy- 
seventh,  New  York  City's  own  National  Army  division,  which 
trained  at  Camp  Upton,  were  boarding  the  transports.  Train 
movements  in  February  entailed  the  operation  of  499  train 
sections  for  151,987  passengers;  in  March  548  sections  took 
224,246  passengers.  April  saw  a  slight  increase  in  travel — 696 
sections  with  297,713  passengers.  The  great  jump  came  in 
May.  The  British  tonnage  was  now  at  the  port.  To  supply 
the  new  demands  the  transportation  system  operated   1,063 


AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT         loi 

special  trains  and  carried  considerably  more  than  half  a  million 
soldiers.  This  was  handling  in  a  single  month  a  volume  of 
traffic  almost  equal  to  half  the  total  military  travel  during 
the  entire  calendar  year  1917. 

To  follow  this  travel  in  any  detail  would  be  monotonous. 
All  we  can  undertake  is  to  view  the  totals  and  in  imagination 
translate  them  into  terms  of  the  physical  activity  on  our  rails. 
In  June,  over  1,200  sections  moved,  carrying  more  than 
500,000  troops.  On  the  nth  of  June  43  special  troop  trains 
started  out  from  various  points  with  more  than  30,000  pas- 
sengers. Each  one  of  these  trains — and  this  was  but  a  typical 
day  of  that  period — required  of  the  organization  in  charge 
that  minute  attention  to  detail  which  has  been  described.  The 
crest  of  the  load  came  in  July,  when  1,277  special  trains, 
carrying  uniformed  and  organized  troops,  traveled  in  the  mili- 
tary movement.  The  July  passengers  numbered  672,266 — a 
figure  which  excludes  soldiers  who  traveled  on  regular  trains 
and  also  the  401,000  drafted  men  inducted  into  the  Army 
during  that  month.  In  all,  the  total  military  passenger  traffic 
of  July,  1918,  was  1,147,013  men,  a  greater  traffic  than  was 
carried  during  the  whole  of  1917. 

The  day  of  heaviest  travel  in  July  was  the  13th,  when  77 
special  trains  departed,  carrying  over  41,000  troops.  These 
figures  indicate  departures  only :  they  take  no  account  of  trains 
which  had  left  their  points  of  origin  before  the  13th,  but  had 
not  yet  reached  their  destinations.  It  is  conservative  to  esti- 
mate that  at  least  200  special  troop  trains  were  running  on 
July  13,  1918.  The  train  departures  of  that  day,  shown  in 
tabular  detail,  were  as  follows: 


102 


THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 


No.  of 

Identity  of 

Point  of 

Trains 

Troops 

Departure 

Destination 

8 

Eighty-fifth  Divi- 

Camp Custer,  Mich. 

Camp  Mills,  L.  I. 

sion  Infantry 

(Embarkation) 

3 

301st  Engineers 

Camp  Devens,  Mass. 

Bush  Terminal, 
Brooklyn 
(Embarkation) 

2 

Marines 

Miami,  Fla. 

Philadelphia 
(Embarkation) 

Coast  Artillery 

Jackson  Barracks, 

Fort  Williams,  Me. 

recruits 

La. 

Medical  Corps 

Jackson  Barracks, 

Allentown,  Pa. 

recruits 

La. 

Recruits 

Columbus  Barracks, 
Ohio 

Camp  Hancock,  Ga. 

Casuals 

Camp  Funston,  Kan. 

Fort  Crook,  Neb. 

Unassigned 

Minneapolis,  Minn. 

Fort  Benj.  Harri- 
son, Ind. 

5 

Eighty-first  Divi- 

Camp Sevier,  S.  C. 

Camp  Upton,  L.  I. 

sion  Infantry 

(Embarkation) 

2 

Replacements 

Camp  Gordon,  Ga. 

Camp  Merritt,  N.  J. 
(Embarkation) 

1 

Unassigned 

Fort  Totten,  N.  Y. 

Camp  Eustis,  Va. 
(Embarkation) 

2 

519th  Service 

Camp  Devens,  Mass. 

Hoboken,  N.  J. 

Battalion 

(Embarkation) 

2 

Intercamp  troops 

Camp  Lewis,  Wash. 

Camp  Kearney,  Cal. 

3 

Field  Artillery  of 

Camp  Meade,  Md. 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Seventy-ninth 

(Embarkation) 

Division 

1 

Seventy-ninth 

Camp  Meade,  Md. 

Newport  News,  Va. 

Division  (freight 

) 

(Embarkation) 

26 

15,926  overseas 

Camp  Mills,  L.  I. 

Long  Island  City,  L.  I. 

troops 

(Embarkation) 

1 

Unassigned  troops 

Minneapolis,  Minn. 

Camp  Dodge,  la. 

1 

57th  Engineers 

Camp  Meade,  Md. 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 
(Embarkation) 

2 

Stevedore  troops 

Camp  Lee,  Va. 

Newport  News,  Va. 
(Embarkation) 

1 

Engineer  replace- 

Camp Humphreys, 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 

ments 

Va. 

(Embarkation) 

2 

Engineer  replace- 

Washington, D.  C. 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 

ments 

(Embarkation) 

1 

Student  officers 

Camp  Sherman,  0. 

Camp  Hancock,  Ga. 

1 

Veterinary  troops 

Camp  Travis,  Tex. 

Camp  Lee,  Va. 

1 

Unassigned 

Fort  Sam  Houston, 

Camp  McArthur, 

Tex. 

Tex. 

7 

Overseas  Engi- 

Camp Upton,  L.  I. 

Long  Island  City,  L.  I. 

neers  and 

(Embarkation) 

Artillery 

AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT         103 

The  procession  of  trains  from  Camp  Mills  to  Long  Island 
City  on  July  13  was  a  typical  movement,  duplicated  time  and 
time  again  during  the  spring  and  summer  of  1918.  Troops  from 
Camp  Merritt  moved  to  the  piers  on  ferry-boats  down  the 
Hudson  River;  but  Camp  Mills,  having  no  water  connection,, 
sent  her  embarkation  troops  by  the  Long  Island  Railroad  to 
the  piers  in  the  East  River,  where  they  marched  upon  ferry- 
boats. These  train  movements  from  Camp  Mills  usually  began 
at  the  early  summer  dawn,  the  trains  leaving  the  camp  at 
twenty-minute  intervals  until  about  noon.  Some  of  the  trains, 
with  as  many  as  1,000  passengers  aboard,  were  unusually 
heavy.  The  railway  journey  to  the  ferry  lasted  about  forty 
minutes.  The  ferry-boats  were  in  the  slips  td  take  up  the  men 
as  rapidly  as  the  trains  discharged  them. 

August  was  another  peak  month.  The  special  movement 
involved  over  1,300  trains,  and  the  total  of  military  pas- 
sengers, including  nearly  300,000  selectives,  again  went  above 
the  million  mark.  In  September  the  movement  declined  some- 
what, but,  even  so,  more  than  1,000  special  trains  were 
operated,  and  nearly  500,000  men  were  carried,  not  counting 
the  inductives  transported  that  month. 

In  September  another  burden  was  placed  on  the  capable 
back  of  the  troop-movement  office:  it  was  charged  with  the 
duty  of  transporting  civilian  labor  supplied  by  the  United 
States  Employment  Service.  In  this  month  the  organization 
operated  ten  special  trains  for  the  movement  of  labor  and, 
in  addition,  transported  over  75,000  laborers  in  special  cars 
attached  to  regular  trains.  The  movement  was  principally 
from  the  Far  West,  where  there  was  an  excess  of  labor,  to  such 
great  government  institutions  as  the  powder  plants  at  Nitro, 
West  Virginia,  and  Nashville,  Tennessee,  where  there  were 
labor  shortages.  In  October  the  movement  of  laborers  required 
the  operation  of  twenty- three  special  trains;  in  November,  of 
fourteen.  The  total  of  civilian  laborers  transported  on  special 
trains  up  to  the  date  of  the  armistice  was  approximately 
50,000. 

As  if  to  compensate  for  this  additional  traffic,  the  movement 


104  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

of  select! ves  from  their  homes  to  camp  somewhat  subsided  in 
volume  after  August  i,  1918.  By  that  date  the  calls  for  troops 
had  virtually  exhausted  the  physically  perfect  and  unencum- 
bered men  between  the  ages  of  twenty-one  and  thirty-one,  and 
the  Government  was  then  preparing  for  the  registration  of  all 
men  between  eighteen  and  forty*-five.  Meanwhile,  the  authori- 
ties did  not  wish  to  disturb  industry  by  dipping  down  into  the 
deferred  classes  of  the  first  registration ;  and  the  Provost  Mar- 
shal General  accordingly  slackened  the  induction  of  selectives 
until  the  new  registration  could  be  held  in  September.  A  more 
important  consideration  was  that  at  this  time  the  crops 
were  being  harvested.  The  War  Department  was  unwilling 
to  withdraw  laborers  from  such  indispensable  work.  In 
fact,  draft  calls  would  have  been  suspended  altogether  during 
this  period  except  for  the  extreme  necessity  of  keeping  up  the 
flow  of  men  to  France.  The  greatest  of  all  interferences  with 
the  transportation  of  selectives  was  the  influenza  epidemic 
which  set  in  over  the  country  about  October  1,  1918.  Because 
of  epidemic  conditions,  draft  calls  for  entire  states  were  fre- 
quently suspended,  and  as  a  result  the  transportation  dimin- 
ished in  volume. 

In  October  the  regular  movements  of  troops  entailed  the 
operation  of  869  special  trains  for  approximately  320,000 
passengers.  During  the  first  eleven  days  of  November,  241 
specials  carried  about  100,000  troops.  Nor  did  military  move- 
ments then  immediately  stop :  from  Armistice  Day  to  the  end 
of  November  the  Government  operated  217  special  troop 
trains  for  approximately  95,000  soldiers. 

The  great  offensive  undertaking  which  had  begun  in  earnest 
May  1,  1917,  and  come  to  a  close  on  the  11th  of  November, 
1918,  had  required  the  operation  of  11,972  trains  over 
10,000,000  train-miles,  and  had  carried  5,051,608  passengers. 
In  addition  to  these,  nearly  1,500,000  troops  had  ridden  on 
regular  trains.  Nor  do  these  figures  include  the  transportation 
of  selectives,  who  numbered  about  2,300,000.  These  round 
out  a  total  traffic  figure  of  over  8,500,000  military  passengers 
transported  during  the  forward  movement.  These  men  were 


Photo  by  Bate  Studio 

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A  FAMILIAR  STATION  SCENE  IN  1918 


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Photo  from  American  Red  Cross 

MAIL  FACILITIES  EN  ROUTE 


AT  THE  HEIGHT  OF  THE  EFFORT         105 

carried  with  an  equipment  which,  at  its  maximum,  did  not 
exceed  1,500  sleeping  cars,  2,500  coaches,  and  500  baggage 
and  express  cars.  The  average  military  train  had  12  cars,  car- 
ried 42 1  men,  and  traveled  785  miles  in  38  hours  at  the  rate 
of  21  miles  an  hour. 

The  men  who  rode  on  these  trains  rode  with  a  degree  of 
safety  unknown  to  the  commercial  passenger.  The  wrecks  and 
accidents  were  blessedly  few.  Whether  or  no  because  of  the 
secrecy  with  which  the  travel  was  invested,  the  passengers  were 
safe  from  the  machinations  of  enemy  agents.  The  country 
sometimes  heard  rumors  of  troop  trains  wrecked  and  of  plot- 
ters and  spies  taken  from  trains  and  summarily  executed  beside 
the  track,  but  these  things  never  occurred.  In  all  there  were 
17  train  accidents,  in  which  41  men  were  killed  and  338  in- 
jured. The  worst  wreck  occurred  on  September  17,  1918,  near 
Mansfield,  Missouri,  when  a  special  train  carrying  selectives 
of  the  September  automatic  replacement  draft  went  head-on 
into  a  freight  train  on  the  St.  Louis  &  San  Francisco  Rail- 
road. The  engineer  of  the  troop  train  failed  to  observe  a  block 
signal  set  against  him.  There  were  507  selectives  on  the  train, 
of  whom  12  were  killed  and  37  injured.  Three  trainmen  also 
lost  their  lives. 

On  the  morning  of  November  1 1,  the  handful  of  executives 
in  the  troop-movement  office  in  Washington,  who  had  man- 
aged successfully  the  hugest  railroad  transportation  of  soldiers 
over  the  longest  distance  ever  attempted,  looked  up  from  their 
work,  which  now  for  the  first  time  did  not  have  to  be  inces- 
santly fought  down  lest  it  overwhelm  them,  and  began  to  take 
stock  of  what  had  been  done.  The  thing  had  been  accom- 
plished; the  war  was  won;  and  their  part  in  the  victory  had 
been  a  vital  one. 

That  of  which  this  little  band  of  practical  railroad 
men  were  perhaps  proudest  was  an  incident  that  occurred  in 
the  latter  part  of  August,  1918,  when  the  military  travel  was 
heaviest.  They  had  made  all  arrangements,  dispatched  the 
equipment  from  a  dozen  points,  and  completed  the  routes  and 
schedules  for  the  transfer  of  15,000  artillerymen  from  Camps 


io6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Taylor  (Kentucky),  Robinson  (Wisconsin),  and  Doniphan 
(Oklahoma),  to  the  seaboard  for  embarkation.  The  trains  of 
empty  cars  were  already  converging  at  these  points,  when  the 
War  Department  called  the  liaison  officer  into  consultation  and 
advised  him  that  the  urgent  overseas  need  was  for  infantry. 
Consequently,  the  Department  had  decided  to  cancel  the  sail- 
ing of  the  artillery  and  to  substitute  on  the  same  ships  17,000 
infantry  troops  from  Camp  Sherman  (Ohio),  Camp  Dodge 
(Iowa),  and  Camp  Funston  (Kansas).  The  ships  were  even 
then  approaching  port ;  some  of  them,  in  fact,  had  arrived  and 
were  unloading.  Could  the  troop-movement  men  accomplish 
this  substitution  without  a  break  in  the  flow  of  troops  to  the 
ports  *? 

It  was  a  question  soon  answered  in  results.  Within  twenty- 
four  hours,  messages  had  caught  every  item  of  the  equipment 
en  route  to  Camps  Taylor,  Robinson,  and  Doniphan,  and  had 
diverted  it  to  Camps  Sherman,  Dodge,  and  Funston.  Some 
units  of  the  designated  infantry  were  on  trains  in  this  same 
equipment  two  days  after  the  War  Department  had  ordered 
the  change.  Only  an  organization  proficient  and  flexible  in 
the  extreme,  as  well  as  in  instant  control  of  all  the  transporta- 
tion facilities,  could  have  handled  so  quickly  this  difficult 
railroading  problem.  By  such  examples  of  extraordinary  oper- 
ation, the  troop-movement  office,  an  organization  of  civilian 
volunteers,  continually  justified  its  existence  as  an  integral 
part  of  the  military  traffic  machine. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  WAR  FREIGHT  PROBLEM 

THE  railroad  movement  of  troops  during  the  war  was 
great  in  volume  and  spectacular  in  accomplishment; 
but  it  was,  after  all,  the  less  difficult  branch  of  mili- 
tary transportation.  Wherever  a  soldier  went,  over  land  or  sea, 
several  tons  of  supplies  each  year — his  food,  his  clothing,  his 
weapons  and  ammunition,  materials  for  his  shelter,  and  thou- 
sands of  other  things,  a  range  of  articles  which  embraced  virtu- 
ally all  the  products  of  industry,  all  the  things  which  kept  him 
fit  and  efficient  as  a  fighter — must  follow  him.  The  railroad 
transportation  of  these  material  supplies  was  a  much  harder 
problem  than  moving  the  troops.  The  Army  quickly  found  that 
it  could  rely  upon  the  railroads  themselves — that  is,  upon  the 
troop-movement  office  of  the  American  Railway  Association, 
which  later  became  the  troop-movement  section  of  the  United 
States  Railroad  Administration — to  manage  all  the  trouble- 
some details  of  the  travel  of  army  personnel ;  but  when  it  came 
to  the  movement  of  the  supplies,  nothing  short  of  a  stern, 
ungloved  military  dictatorship  of  freight  transportation  was 
sufficient  to  bring  order  out  of  a  perilous  confusion  and  save 
the  nation  from  a  disaster. 

The  Army  was  compelled,  then,  to  take  into  its  own  hands 
the  transportation  of  its  supplies.  It  adopted  this  drastic  meas- 
ure only  after  the  failure  of  the  railroads  had  brought  the  mili- 
tary supply  system  to  the  very  brink  of  demoralization.  The 
rescue  of  American  freight  traffic  from  the  chaos  which  almost 
engulfed  it  late  in  1917  was  one  of  the  stirring  episodes  of  our 
participation  in  the  World  War.  The  transportation  of  troops 
has,  of  course,  the  more  direct  human  appeal ;  yet  there  is,  in 
the  prosaic  progress  of  the  military  freight  train,  rattling  and 


io8  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

clanking  along  toward  its  destination,  another  and  not  less 
intense  drama  of  human  struggle  and  final  triumph  over  diffi- 
culties for  the  reader's  imagination  to  compass.  To  compre- 
hend this  drama,  one  must  first  know  something  of  the  traffic 
problem  that  confronted  the  War  Department  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1918. 

Return  in  fancy  to  the  days  of  crinoline  and  candles,  post- 
chaises  and  clipper  ships;  the  days  when  beaver-hatted  digni- 
taries gathered  ceremonially  to  drive  the  last  silver  spike  which 
celebrated  the  completion  of  that  astounding  novelty,  a  new 
steam  railroad.  The  locomotive  wore  a  decorative  grille  to 
top  off  its  smokestack;  the  fireman  balanced  himself  on  a 
precarious  platform;  and  (if  we  are  to  believe  the  ancient 
woodcuts)  a  train,  whenever  it  passed  through  a  town,  was 
accompanied  by  spidery  little  boys  running  beside  the  track 
and  waving  velvet  caps  with  ribbons  hanging  down  behind. 
In  that  transitional  time  the  railroad  builder  put  freight  cars 
on  his  track  for  use  there,  and  there  only. 

As  long  as  the  road  remained  isolated,  unconnected  with 
others,  well  and  good;  but  when  system  after  system  sprang 
up  and  touched  each  other,  until  eventually  a  joined  network 
of  lines  covered  the  entire  land,  then  freight  cars  began  obey- 
ing, not  company  regulations,  but  economic  laws.  A  car  was 
loaded  with  freight  for  a  consignee  beyond  the  limit  of  the 
railroad's  trackage.  At  that  limit,  it  was  obviously  laborious 
and  costly  to  unload  the  car  and  transfer  its  freight  to  a  car 
belonging  to  the  connecting  carrier.  Instead  of  that,  the  inevit- 
able recourse  was  to  switch  the  car  to  the  connecting  line  and 
haul  it  along  toward  its  destination,  transferring  it  to  as  many 
railroads  as  were  necessary  to  bring  it  to  the  consignee.  There, 
when  it  was  unloaded,  it  was  not  to  be  sent  back  empty  to  the 
owning  line;  for  that,  too,  would  have  entailed  useless  effort. 
Instead,  the  last  railroad  to  receive  the  car  used  it  as  if  it  were 
its  own,  delivering  it  to  a  shipper  along  its  line  for  a  load.  The 
car's  destination  this  time  might  be  even  farther  away  from 
its  ownership.  Although,  of  late  years,  roads  have  made  strenu- 
ous efforts  to  corral  their  absent  equipment,  freight  rolling 


THE  WAR  FREIGHT  PROBLEM  109 

stock  has  tended  to  remain  the  bondservant  of  business,  know- 
ing no  owner.  Sometimes  it  is  years  before  a  wandering  car 
chances  to  find  itself  upon  home  rails. 

Thus  the  original  supplies  of  cars  became  as  thoroughly 
mixed  as  lottery  numbers  in  a  jar.  The  circumstances  of  inland 
commerce  threw  the  entire  freight  rolling  stock  of  the  country 
into  a  pool  from  which  any  road  or  shipper  could  draw.  Freight 
cars  became  a  common  commodity,  like  money,  circulating 
from  hand  to  hand.  Under  such  a  system,  abuses  sprang  up. 
Certain  entire  railroad  systems  built  no  rolling  stock  at  all 
(except  locomotives),  and  relied  entirely  upon  the  cars  of 
other  lines.  The  result  was  that  roads  with  heavy  investments 
in  freight  cars  frequently  found  themselves  with  insufficient 
rolling  stock  to  handle  their  traffic,  whereas  other  lines  with  a 
scant  equipment  of  freight  cars  or,  actually,  no  cars  at  all,  were 
holding  excess  numbers  of  cars  for  the  benefit  of  customers 
along  their  rails.  Shippers  had  come  to  use  railroad  equipment 
as  a  universal  commodity,  held  in  only  the  vaguest  bonds  of 
private  ownership.  A  broker  who  had  a  consignment  of  goods 
approaching  a  market  might  hold  his  stock  aboard  its  cars 
while  he  waited  for  better  prices.  In  times  of  car  stringency, 
shippers  who  could  secure  rolling  stock  retained  it  on  their 
sidings  as  insurance  against  future  requirements. 

The  railroads  presently  took  steps  to  curtail  such  abuses. 
The  larger  owners  of  rolling  stock  attempted  to  keep  track 
of  their  equipment  by  elaborate  systems  of  index  cards  and 
wall  charts.  But  these  owners  sometimes  found  themselves 
powerless  to  draw  in  their  cars,  even  after  they  had  located 
them.  There  arose  joint  railroad  committees  for  relocation  of 
cars;  there  arose,  also,  the  current  system  of  interline  car 
rules  and  regulations.  Further  to  prohibit  such  unwarranted 
uses  of  equipment,  the  railroads  prescribed  penalties,  demur- 
rage charges.  Such  measures,  however,  could  not  correct  all 
the  evils;  and  it  became  a  function  of  government  regulation 
to  guarantee  the  equitable  distribution  and  use  of  freight  roll- 
ing stock.  The  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  is  chiefly 
known  to  the  general  public  for  its  activities  in  regulating 


no  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

freight  rates  and  passenger  fares;  nevertheless,  a  great  part 
of  its  work  is  concerned  with  the  operation  of  the  car  equip- 
ment of  the  country. 

Modern  railroading  possesses,  besides  its  pool  of  cars,  cer- 
tain terminals  where  freight  converges,  and  certain  lines  oper- 
ating out  of  these  terminals.  Some  of  the  lines  are  strong  and 
active;  others  are  smaller  and  not  so  aggressive.  The  great 
lines,  waxing  in  strength,  established  business  connections,  with 
mutual  understandings  and  agreements,  in  such  wise  that  an 
outlying  connecting  road,  lacking  specific  instructions  from  a 
shipper  to  the  contrary,  would  route  its  cars  over  the  strong 
and  aggressive  allied  road,  which  would  benefit  financially  by 
sharing  the  freight  charges  collected.  The  strong  roads  of  the 
land  have  ramified  their  traffic-soliciting  departments  until  the 
agents  of  those  departments  are  in  every  principal  town  and 
city  in  the  United  States,  and  even  in  foreign  countries.  The 
New  York  Central  Railroad  proper  connects  New  York  and 
Chicago  along  the  route  of  the  Great  Lakes :  yet  the  New  York 
Central  maintains,  for  example,  in  Louisiana,  a  thousand  miles 
from  its  tracks,  freight  agents  who  go  to  the  Louisiana  lumber 
shippers  to  persuade  them  to  route  their  eastern  business  over 
the  New  York  Central  lines. 

The  solicitation  of  business  by  terminal  lines  has  had  a 
strong  bearing  on  the  development  of  cities  in  the  United 
States.  Such  development  has  been  striking  on  our  Atlantic  sea- 
board. Norfolk,  Virginia,  for  instance,  has  as  convenient,  as 
well  sheltered,  and  as  commodious  a  harbor  as  New  York;  but 
the  strong,  aggressive  lines  have  been  those  terminating  in  New 
York.  The  result  is  that  New  York  handles  the  great  bulk  of 
Atlantic  export  traffic  from  the  United  States,  whereas  the 
excellent  facilities  of  such  harbors  as  Norfolk,  Boston,  Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore,  and  Charleston  have  experienced  no  such 
development.  This  evolution  is  perhaps  not  disadvantageous 
during  normal  periods,  but  in  times  of  transportation  strin- 
gency it  has  resulted  in  a  shockingly  inefficient  use  of  our 
traffic  facilities.  At  times  when  the  ocean  terminals  of  certain 
lines  have  been  literally  glutted  with  traffic  and  the  resultant 


THE  WAR  FREIGHT  PROBLEM  in 

delay  in  transportation  has  caused  nation-wide  suffering,  other 
terminals — sometimes  those  of  roads  terminating  at  New 
York  itself — have  been  working  at  less  than  their  capacity. 

Another  inefficiency  brought  about  by  railroad  competition 
for  business  was  the  operation  of  cars  over  much  longer  routes 
than  were  necessary.  As  an  illustration,  the  Chicago,  Rock 
Island  &  Pacific  Railroad  handles  freight  between  Chicago  and 
Little  Rock,  Arkansas.  The  distance  over  this  route  between 
these  two  points  is  1,277  rnil^s.  The  distance  between  Chicago 
and  Little  Rock  via  the  Chicago  &  Alton  Railroad  and  the 
Missouri  Pacific  is  633  miles.  In  other  words,  freight  traveling 
on  the  Rock  Island  from  Little  Rock  to  Chicago  actually  goes 
more  than  twice  the  distance  of  the  short  route  between  these 
points.  This  is  only  one  of  dozens  of  instances  in  which  com- 
petition has  resulted  in  the  inefficient  employment  of  power 
and  rolling  stock.  These  inefficiencies  apparently  had  little 
effect  on  the  political  economy  of  the  country  in  normal 
times — although,  of  course,  in  the  last  analysis  the  general 
public  pays  for  every  pound  of  coal  expended  in  waste  motion 
and  for  every  day's  wear  and  tear  upon  a  car  traveling  more 
miles  than  it  should  to  reach  a  given  destination.  But  when 
we  went  into  a  war  that  demanded  the  concentration  of  every 
resource  of  the  United  States  to  the  single  end  of  victory, 
then  these  inefficiencies  became  a  matter  of  paramount  national 
concern. 

The  fact  was  that  American  rail  transportation  was  an 
industrial  tool  too  unwieldy  for  us  to  handle  as  we  were 
attempting  to  handle  it.  It  was  like  an  automobile  with  four 
or  five  operators — one  man  at  the  steering  wheel,  another  at 
the  gas,  a  third  at  the  gears,  and  so  on — safe  enough  so  long 
as  the  machine  could  run  along  a  broad,  level  beach  with  no 
external  interference  to  the  concerted  attention,  but  tolerably 
certain  to  come  to  grief  in  heavy  traffic.  The  railroad  system 
was  operated  by  its  several  hundred  independent  units,  each 
a  competitor  of  the  others,  and  each  actuated  by  a  necessary 
self-interest  to  take  what  it  could,  especially  in  times  of  stress. 
All  worked  well  normally;  but  in  an  emergency  America  pre- 


112  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

sented  the  anomalous  picture  of  a  nation  equipped  with  the 
finest  and  most  complete  transportation  system  in  the  world, 
actually  suffering  because  of  the  failure  of  that  system  to 
function  efficiently. 

For  years  and  decades  this  has  been  the  state  of  affairs.  A 
man  has  a  long  memory  if  he  can  recollect  a  time  when  the 
movement  of  the  grain  crop  has  not  caused  a  car  shortage 
embarrassing  to  other  great  national  activities.  Since  America 
became  industrially  supreme  there  has  been  scarcely  a  winter 
in  which  it  has  not  been  difficult  to  secure  an  adequate  supply 
of  coal,  thanks  again  to  the  inefficient  administration  of  traffic. 
Paper  makers  have  grown  used  to  the  regular  annual  shortages 
of  pulp  wood,  due  to  the  failure  of  transportation  to  send  a 
sufficient  number  of  cars  into  the  logging  areas.  The  chemical 
industry  has  suffered  for  phosphate  rock  and  for  sulphur, 
usually  at  regular  annual  periods.  Great  crops,  such  as  the 
Pacific  coast's  perishable  fruit  crop,  have  seldom  moved  out 
as  rapidly  as  the  fields  and  orchards  could  supply  the  lading. 
Every  person,  whether  he  knew  it  or  not,  has  experienced  some 
personal  inconvenience  as  the  result  of  these  periodical  failures 
of  railroad  transportation.  The  phrase  "car  shortage"  is  famil- 
iar to  all.  Yet  there  have  always  been  enough  cars  for  our 
transportation  needs.  The  actual  shortage  was  a  shortage  not 
of  cars,  but  of  efficiency  in  the  control  of  them.  If  American 
transportation  forged  ahead  and  kept  pace  with  industry,  it 
was  only  by  main  strength  and  awkwardness. 

Then,  in  1914,  when  the  Great  War  broke  out  in  Europe, 
America,  always  theretofore  essentially  an  importing  country, 
suddenly  became  the  world's  exporter  preeminent.  We  became 
all  at  once  the  munitioning  country  for  the  European  Allies. 
The  manufacture  of  munitions  bounded  into  prominence  until 
it  had  become  a  dominant  part  of  American  industry.  The 
products  of  this  manufacture  had  to  cross  the  ocean,  and  that 
meant  that  they  had  to  concentrate  at  the  seaboard  over  Ameri- 
can rails.  When  this  concentration  was  attempted  on  the  sys- 
tem of  operating  American  railroads  through  their  independ- 
ent units,  the  result  was  trouble. 


THE  WAR  FREIGHT  PROBLEM  113 

By  early  December,  1916,  the  worst  freight  car  congestion 
in  the  history  of  American  railroads  had  clogged  and  choked 
the  port  of  New  York.  For  miles  upon  miles  out  of  New 
York  in  every  inland  direction,  cars  were  stacked  up  along 
the  sidings  and  switches.  Rail  traffic  suffered  a  partial  paraly- 
sis. Congestions  similar,  though  smaller  in  degree,  were  tying 
up  traffic  in  all  of  the  principal  producing  areas  of  the  coun- 
try. Railroads  which  were  heavy  originators  of  freight  traffic 
seized  and  held  every  bit  of  equipment  that  came  upon  their 
lines,  and  the  cars  available  for  the  occasional  shipper  virtually 
disappeared  from  the  rails.  America's  magnificent  equipment 
of  nearly  2,500,000  freight  cars,  enough,  if  economically  em- 
ployed, to  move  a  great  part  of  the  traffic  of  the  whole  world, 
was  tangled  in  an  alm.ost  inextricable  knot. 

The  situation  was  described  by  the  Hon.  C.  C.  McChord, 
a  member  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  who  con- 
ducted the  investigation  of  the  car  supply  at  that  time,  in 
these  words:  "In  some  territories  the  railroads  have  furnished 
but  a  small  part  of  the  cars  necessary  for  the  transportation 
of  staple  articles  of  commerce,  such  as  coal,  grain,  lumber, 
fruits  and  vegetables.  In  consequence  mills  have  shut  down, 
prices  have  advanced,  perishable  articles  of  great  value  have 
been  destroyed,  and  hundreds  of  carloads  of  food  products 
have  been  delayed  in  reaching  their  natural  markets.  In  other 
territories  there  have  been  so  many  cars  on  the  lines  of  the 
carriers  and  in  their  terminals  that  transportation  service  has 
been  thrown  into  unprecedented  confusion,  long  delays  in 
transit  have  been  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception,  and  the 
operation  of  established  industrial  activities  has  been  made 
uncertain  and  difficult."* 

All  this  meant  suffering,  men  out  of  work,  people  doing 
without  the  things  they  should  have  had ;  and  it  meant  waste, 
loss  of  perishable  foods,  damage  to  goods  exposed  overlong  to 
frost,  rain,  and  sun.  More  than  that,  it  meant  the  humiliation 
of  a  nation  which  prided  itself  upon  its  industrial  genius,  yet 
was  unable  to  handle  the  most  indispensable  tool  of  its  indus- 

*  I.  C.  C.  No.  9284.  Car  Supply  Investigation.  January  18,  1917. 


114  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

tr) — its  railroad  transportation.  The  fault  lay,  not  in  the  men 
in  charge  of  transportation — for,  as  they  were  to  show  later, 
their  ability  fully  measured  up  to  the  requirements — but  at 
the  door  of  the  system  of  control.  The  system  itself  was 
basically  inefficient. 

The  railroads  tried  valiantly  to  untangle  the  jam.  Condi- 
tions were  still  bad  when,  in  April,  war  was  declared — a  crisis 
which  made  it  of  paramount  importance  to  the  very  safety  of 
the  nation  to  bring  about  an  improvement.  The  railroads  ap- 
pointed a  Committee  of  Five  to  act  as  the  central  administra- 
tive agency  of  an  attempt  to  operate  the  railway  system  of 
the  United  States  as  a  unit.  This  committee  consisted  of 
Messrs.  Samuel  Rea,  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad, 
chairman;  Julius  Kruttschnitt,  president  of  the  Southern 
Pacific;  Hale  Holden,  president  of  the  Burlington;  Howard 
Elliott,  president  of  the  New  Haven;  and  Fairfax  Harrison, 
president  of  the  Southern  Railroad.  The  committee  created  a 
special  car-service  commission,  all  of  its  members  traffic  ex- 
perts, to  supervise  the  adequate  distribution  and  movement  of 
rolling  stock.  The  railroads  of  various  districts  organized  addi- 
tional committees  to  supervise  local  compliance  with  the 
orders  of  the  Committee  of  Five.  The  most  important  of  these 
district  operating  committees  was  that  at  Pittsburg.  This  body 
was  organized  by  the  eastern  railroads — those  which  fed  into 
the  principal  Atlantic  ports.  The  Pittsburg  Committee  at- 
tempted, by  fixing  preferences  and  priorities,  to  give  our 
export  transportation  that  unified  order  without  which,  under 
the  load  which  American  belligerency  was  about  to  place  upon 
it,  it  must  certainly  fall. 

All  these  expedients,  remedial  to  a  certain  degree,  were  not 
sufficient  to  cope  with  the  situation.  The  railroads  found  their 
hands  tied  by  federal  laws  which  prevented  combinations  and 
the  pooling  of  their  facilities.  The  orders  of  the  Committee 
of  Five  were,  at  best,  but  advisory ;  they  lacked  the  mandatory 
power  which  could  have  made  them,  in  the  true  sense,  execu- 
tive. These  reforms  and  the  advent  of  mild  weather  in  the 
spring  of  1917  brought  some  alleviation.  But  the  railroads 


THE  WAR  FREIGHT  PROBLEM  115 

were  still  staggering  under  their  load  of  freight  when  there 
descended  upon  the  tracks  a  crushing  weight  of  building  mate- 
rials to  be  hauled  to  the  sites  of  the  new  military  training 
camps.  At  the  same  time,  new  munition  plants  to  meet  the 
Government's  needs  were  springing  up  in  all  sections  of  the 
country,  and  the  first  traffic  in  America's  own  munitions  was 
beginning  to  flow.  The  War  Industries  Board  in  Washington 
and  the  various  producing  bureaus  attempted  to  put  in  force 
some  sort  of  priority  in  shipments.  In  fact,  never  in  the  past 
had  there  been  the  degree  of  codrdination  in  railroad  traffic 
that  there  was  in  the  summer  of  1917.  Yet  never  before  dur- 
ing the  summer  season  had  American  railroad  traffic  been  so 
congested.  Food  and  coal  were  not  moving  as  they  should 
during  this  normally  slack  period,  and  the  experienced  traffic 
man  looked  forward  to  the  coming  winter  with  dismay. 

His  worst  fears  failed  to  picture  what  actually  occurred. 
The  winter  of  1917-1918  descended  with  great  severity  and 
continued  for  weeks  and  months  the  coldest  and  stormiest  in 
the  annals  of  the  Weather  Bureau.  Rail  transportation  fal- 
tered in  December,  1917,  and  paralysis  traveled  back  along 
its  members  from  a  dozen  foci.  The  congestion  of  the  previous 
winter  had  been  light  in  comparison.  The  accumulation  of 
freight  at  the  Atlantic  seaboard  reached  the  stupendous  total 
of  44,320  carloads,  or  approximately  2,000,000  tons.  Tracks 
were  so  crowded  with  cars  that  it  was  virtually  impossible  to 
extricate  properly  distributed  cargoes  for  the  loading  of  ves- 
sels. Freight  had  backed  up  from  New  York  to  as  far  west  as 
Pittsburg  and  Buffalo.  The  railroad  men,  trying  desperately 
to  secure  cars  and  room,  and  realizing  the  hopelessness  of  wait- 
ing for  the  congestion  to  be  untangled,  unloaded  freight  by 
dumping  it  unceremoniously  on  the  ground  beside  the  tracks. 

Meanwhile,  with  Europe  in  a  desperate  way  for  food  and 
munitions  and  with  our  own  Expeditionary  Forces  growing 
and  demanding  a  continued  and  uninterrupted  flow  of  supplies, 
at  New  York  alone  there  were  over  200  ocean-going  ships 
anchored  or  tied  up  to  the  docks,  unable  to  move  because  of 
either  lack  of  cargoes  or  lack  of  coal  for  their  bunkers.  And 


ii6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

this  occurred  at  a  time  when  the  inroads  of  the  German  sub- 
marines had  brought  the  Allies'  shipping  to  a  dangerously  low 
mark;  a  time  when  the  continuance  of  military  operations 
against  Germany  depended  upon  the  ability  of  the  mariners  to 
keep  their  ships  moving  at  sea,  or  loading  or  discharging  car- 
goes in  port,  every  minute  of  every  day.  The  immediate  result 
of  the  congestion  was  a  tremendous  drop  in  the  export  cargo 
tonnage.  When  the  late  Lord  Rhonda,  the  British  food  con- 
troller, viewed  the  American  export  figures  for  December,  he 
sent  to  Washington  a  memorable  message:  "Unless  America 
can  increase  in  January  the  quantity  of  supplies  sent  in 
December,  I  am  unwilling  to  guarantee  that  the  Allied  Na- 
tions can  hold  out."  Rail  transportation,  because  of  its  method 
of  administration,  had  failed  in  the  nation's  greatest  emer- 
gency. For  America,  it  was  the  darkest  hour  of  the  war. 

On  December  28,   1917,  the  Government  stepped  in  and 
took  charge  of  the  railroads. 


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Photo  by   Underwood  &  Underwood,  N.   Y. 

WOOD  AND  CANVAS  CONSTRUCTION,  CAMP  MILLS 


Photo  by  International  Film  Service 

CANTONMENT  CONSTRUCTION,  CAMP  DEVENS 


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Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

LOADING  PLATFORM  AT  ARMY  DEPOT 


From   The  War   Collrg,'  Collection 

ARMY  FREIGHT  LOADED  AT  A  MUNITIONS  PLANT 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM 

THE  War  Department  responded  to  the  government 
seizure  of  the  railway  lines  by  establishing,  within  the 
General  Staff's  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and 
Traffic,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service,  to  assume  sole  control  of 
the  transportation  of  soldiers  and  military  supplies.  Mr.  H.  M. 
Adams,  an  eminent  traffic  expert,  was  appointed  director  of 
the  new  organization.  This  action  was  taken  on  January  lo, 
1918,  thirteen  days  after  the  Government  began  operating 
the  railroads.  Within  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  one  branch 
was  created  to  supervise  the  transport  of  troops ;  but  since  the 
American  Railway  Association  had  already  built  up  an  expert 
and  effective  machine  for  conducting  troop  travel,  and  since 
the  new  United  States  Railroad  Administration,  the  federal 
operating  agency,  had  adopted  this  machine  bodily  as  its  troop- 
movement  section,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  required  for  its 
passenger  branch  only  a  single  officer,  with  his  few  necessary 
assistants,  to  act  as  the  Army's  supervisor  of  troop  travel  and 
as  the  official  forwarder  of  travel  orders  from  the  Adjutant 
General  to  the  troop-movement  section.  The  rest  of  the  exten- 
sive organization  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  devoted  itself 
exclusively  to  the  transportation  of  military  freight. 

The  traffic  situation  was  now  in  its  most  hopeless  stage. 
At  New  York  there  was  an  accumulation  of  nearly  3,500  car- 
loads of  war  department  freight,  stored  in  cars  caught  and 
held  fast  in  the  crush,  unloaded  in  warehouses  or  upon  the 
unsheltered  ground,  or  stacked  upon  river  and  bay  piers 
jammed  to  capacity  with  cargo  which  awaited  shipment.  The 
total  amount  of  all  government  freight  at  the  North  Atlantic 
ports,  including  supplies  for  the  European  Allies,  but  exclud- 


ii8  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ing  grain  and  coal  in  bulk,  was  approximately  30,000  car- 
loads. The  incessant  blizzards  of  the  winter  had  banked  up  the 
drifts  and  solidified  the  stagnation  on  the  rails.  Cars  of  coal 
came  up  to  the  docks  at  Norfolk  frozen — a  most  unusual 
occurrence,  partly  because  weather  severe  enough  to  freeze 
coal  in  cars  is  seldom  experienced  so  far  south  as  Norfolk,  and 
partly  because  the  lower  Chesapeake,  the  best-equipped  coal- 
loading  harborage  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  can  handle  cars  so 
rapidly  that  as  a  rule  they  do  not  remain  on  the  sidings  long 
enough  for  their  coal  to  freeze  in  any  sort  of  weather.  The 
export  of  A.  E.  F.  supplies,  which  had  reached  nearly  178,000 
tons  in  December,  fell  in  January  to  1 19,000  tons. 

The  task  which  devolved  on  Mr.  Adams  and  the  organiza- 
tion of  expert  traffic  men  which  he  quickly  built  up  was  to 
extricate  the  army  freight  from  the  jam,  open  up  channels 
through  the  congestion,  and  provide  for  an  expansion  of  traffic 
commensurate  with  the  multiplying  needs  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
There  was  given  him  no  time  for  extended  study  of  the  situa- 
tion or  for  a  leisurely  promulgation  of  rules  that  should  bring 
about  the  desired  results.  He  not  only  had  to  effect  complete 
relief,  but  he  had  to  do  it  instantly  and  in  the  face  of  the  worst 
weather  conditions  which  eastern  railroading  had  known. 
Severe  cold  appreciably  slows  down  transportation,  even  with 
other  factors  normal.  Switches  freeze  and  become  hard  to 
operate,  brakemen  and  trackmen  are  hampered  in  their  move- 
ments by  heavy  clothing,  and  low  temperatures  decrease  the 
pulling  power  of  a  locomotive.  Add  to  these  conditions  snow- 
drifts so  deep  that  passenger  trains  are  stalled  in  the  streets 
of  Syracuse,  New  York,  and  you  have  some  idea  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  Army's  task. 

There  was,  however,  this  element  of  hope  in  the  situation : 
every  traffic  man  knew  what  was  the  trouble  and  why  the  jam 
had  occurred.  The  railroads  themselves,  being  shackled  by  the 
anti-trust  laws  which  prevented  combination  for  the  sake  of 
efficient  operation,  had  been  unable  to  apply  the  remedy.  The 
Government's  seizure  of  the  lines  had  for  the  time  being 
wiped  off  the  statute  books  the  laws  which  prevented  unified 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    119 

operation;  and  the  Inland  Traffic  Service,  through  the  medium 
of  the  Railroad  Administration,  could  now  administer  the 
remedy  at  will. 

The  trouble  was  primarily  the  lack  of  coordination  between 
shippers  and  consignees.  Roads  which  originated  traffic  nat- 
urally put  upon  their  rails  as  much  business  as  they  could 
secure,  whenever  they  could  secure  it,  regardless  of  conditions 
at  the  terminals  into  which  that  business  had  to  flow.  Many  of 
the  war  contracts  provided  that  the  Government  should  pay 
for  supplies  as  soon  as  they  were  loaded  on  freight  cars  at  the 
factories.  Holders  of  such  contracts  were  in  a  hurry  to  load, 
whether  or  not  the  Army  was  yet  ready  to  use  the  goods.  The 
various  production  bureaus  felt  the  spur  of  competition  to 
make  a  creditable  showing  by  putting  their  freight  on  the  rails 
as  quickly  as  possible,  although  often  there  was  no  urgent 
demand. 

The  Government,  through  the  War  Industries  Board,  had 
established  priorities  in  the  rail  shipment  of  materials  to  the 
munitions  plants ;  but  up  to  this  time  there  had  been  no  single 
official  organization  which  determined  priorities  in  the  over- 
seas shipment  of  finished  supplies.  Each  producing  bureau  had 
rushed  to  the  ports  as  much  of  its  ?nateriel  as  it  could  secure 
from  the  factories,  regardless  of  the  place  held  by  the  goods 
in  the  whole  military  scheme. 

To  control  car  congestion,  the  railroads  themselves  had 
possessed  only  the  clumsy  remedy  of  the  general  embargo. 
They  could  clamp  down  this  lid  on  a  congested  district,  dam 
back  all  traffic  until  the  congestion  inside  the  embargo  had 
been  relieved,  and  repeat  the  process  whenever  necessary.  Em- 
bargoes of  greater  or  less  severity  had  been  imposed  around 
the  Atlantic  ports  for  several  months  before  the  end  of  1917; 
and  when  the  congestion  of  the  early  winter  became  acute, 
these  embargoes,  particularly  at  the  port  of  New  York,  were 
made,  so  far  as  the  commercial  shipper  was  concerned,  com- 
plete. The  principal  exception  was  all  war  department  freight. 

Before  the  time  of  government  operation,  when  the  Com- 
mittee of  Five  was  still  attempting  to  handle  the  situation,  an 


120  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

army  production  officer  had  only  to  go  before  the  railroad 
authorities  and  make  representation  that  the  products  in  his 
charge  were  an  immediate  necessity  for  the  A.  E.  F.,  and  he 
could  secure  orders  permitting  his  shipment  to  move  into  the 
congested  tidewater  district.  Each  production  officer  was  nat- 
urally an  enthusiast  for  his  own  specific  responsibility  and 
prone  to  exaggerate,  honestly  enough,  the  relative  importance 
of  his  own  supplies.  The  railroads  and,  later  on,  the  United 
States  Railroad  Administration  had  no  means  of  judging 
whether  the  production  bureau's  arguments  were  sound.  They 
could  only  grant  the  order  which  opened  the  embargo  for  the 
proposed  shipment.  At  tidewater  the  embarkation  officers 
formed  their  own  opinions  as  to  the  urgency  of  export.  They 
might  put  certain  incoming  shipments  aboard  transports  at 
once,  or  they  might  leave  them  on  the  tracks  while  more  nec- 
essary freight  appropriated  the  narrow  passages  through  the 
congestion. 

The  organization  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  gave  the 
War  Department,  for  the  first  time,  a  central  agency  for 
regulating  the  rail  movement  of  export  supplies  according  to 
their  importance  in  the  maintenance  of  the  A.  E.  F.  The 
secret  of  orderly  traffic  was  complete  control  throughout  tran- 
sit from  beginning  to  end — control  at  the  source  exercised 
from  the  terminal.  But  before  such  control  could  be  exerted 
systematically  it  was  necessary  to  formulate  regulations;  and, 
pending  the  day  when  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  could  promul- 
gate its  system,  Mr.  Adams  asked  the  Railroad  Adminis- 
tration to  make  complete  against  all  war  department  traffic 
the  embargo  around  the  ports.  Exceptions  to  the  embargo  were 
to  be  made  only  upon  request  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service 
itself. 

Thereafter,  when  a  producing  bureau  asked  for  railway 
priority  to  a  port,  it  had  to  make  a  case  for  itself  before  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service,  which  was  in  close  touch  with  the  whole 
military  situation  and  competent  to  determine  the  urgency  of 
any  request.  The  Service  was  also  in  immediate  liaison  with 
the  Embarkation  Service,  which  had  charge  of  the  ocean  termi- 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    121 

nals  and  of  the  army  transports.  Thus  it  was  advised  at  all 
times  whether  commodities,  in  case  they  were  passed  through 
the  embargo,  would  find  ship  room. 

By  these  means  the  new  Service  held  back  the  flow  of 
freight  until  it  could  secure  elbow  room  at  the  ports.  Its 
earliest  actions  were  specific  treatments  of  special  cases  as 
they  arose.  It  hastily  analyzed  the  freight  already  at  the  ports, 
whether  in  cars  or  unloaded.  The  more  urgent  freight  was 
rescued  from  the  jam  and  placed  upon  the  docks  and  piers. 
The  less  urgent  was  unloaded  and  stored.  It  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  the  whole  congestion  was  cleared  up  immediately. 
But  these  emergency  measures  continued  only  until  a  sem- 
blance of  order  had  been  secured  and  more  room  obtained  in 
the  railroad  yards.  Then  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  was  ready 
to  put  its  permanent  system  into  force. 

On  the  18th  of  February,  1918,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service 
issued  its  first  two  orders,  which  set  forth  the  rules  under  which 
war  department  freight  would  thenceforth  move  on  the  rails. 
These  rules  were  so  well  considered  in  advance  that  it  was 
never  necessary  to  change  them.  They  became  the  permanent 
law  which  brought  order  out  of  chaos.  Later  amplifications  of 
them  extended  the  system  throughout  the  United  States. 

The  first  of  these  orders.  No.  1,  was  a  notice  to  the  bureaus 
of  the  military  organization  that  the  Inland  TrafBc  Service 
had  assumed  full  control  of  all  military  traffic,  both  freight 
and  passenger.  All  army  negotiations  with  the  railroads  and 
other  private  transportation  companies  were  to  be  conducted 
solely  by  the  Inland  Traffic  Service.  The  Army  had  made  a 
practice  of  shipping  freight  to  terminals  without  specific  bill- 
ing directions  as  to  the  delivery  of  such  freight,  expecting  to 
supply  the  delivery  instructions  later,  after  determining  where 
the  property  could  be  stored  or  received  for  overseas  shipment. 
This  practice,  because  it  had  resulted  in  holding  loaded  cars 
in  terminal  yards,  was  an  aggravating  element  in  the  car  con- 
gestion. Order  No.  1  forbade  its  continuance.  The  order  also 
prohibited  the  shipment  of  freight  to  any  destination  for  diver- 
sion or  reconsignment,  another  practice  which  had  sprung  up 


122  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

in  military  traffic.  The  order  forbade  the  shipment  of  property 
to  central  points  for  inspection  and  reshipment,  by  requiring 
inspection  prior  to  the  original  loading  upon  freight  cars. 
The  order  shut  down  on  the  extravagant  use  of  the  railway 
express  in  war  department  traffic.  It  set  forth  other  rules,  all 
of  them  directed  to  the  relief  of  rail  congestion. 

On  the  same  day,  February  18,  the  Service  issued  its  Order 
No.  2,  the  actual  operation  order.  This  established  a  perma- 
nent embargo  against  war  department  freight  at  New  York 
and  its  environs,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  the  whole  port 
region  of  lower  Chesapeake  Bay,  and  other  principal  Atlantic 
ports.  From  this  embargo  the  order  excepted  only  construction 
material  consigned  to  the  various  military  building  projects 
within  these  regions. 

After  it  had  fastened  down  the  embargo — and  this  em- 
bargo was  to  continue  until  the  war  was  over  and  demobiliza- 
tion came  to  an  end,  extending  eventually  to  the  principal 
producing  and  receiving  centers  of  the  entire  United  States — 
Order  No.  2  then  went  on  to  outline  the  procedure  whereby 
army  freight  might  pass  through.  The  open  sesame  was  the 
War  Department  Transportation  Order,  a  new  thing  in  rail- 
roading, and  later  known  in  traffic  by  its  initials,  W.  D.  T.  O. 
Government  contractors  and  producing  bureaus  were  for- 
bidden to  place  a  pound  of  freight  on  any  car  billed  for  the 
proscribed  zones  unless  they  possessed  Transportation  Orders 
issued  by  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  in  Washington  and  signed 
by  an  authorized  officer  in  the  Service. 

One  could  not  evade  the  system  of  control.  A  shipper  might 
manage  to  get  hold  of  a  car,  but  he  could  not  load  it  with 
war  department  freight  and  expect  to  dispatch  it  into  one 
of  the  embargoed  areas,  because  the  railroads  themselves,  by 
order  of  the  Director  General  in  Washington,  were  forbidden 
to  receive  freight  billed  through  the  embargo,  unless  the 
shipper  produced  a  War  Department  Transportation  Order. 
The  regulations  prescribed  that  each  bill  of  lading  for  such 
freight  must  bear  upon  its  face  the  serial  number  given  by 
the  Inland  Traffic  Service  to  the  Transportation  Order  per- 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    123 

mitting  the  shipment  to  be  made,  and  no  bill  of  lading  was 
legal  without  this  number. 

In  order  to  secure  a  War  Department  Transportation  Or- 
der the  shipper,  who  might  be  a  government  bureau,  a  field 
officer  of  a  producing  bureau,  or  a  private  contractor,  had  to 
make  application  to  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  in  Washington. 
In  this  application  the  shipper  was  required  to  describe  the 
property  to  be  sent,  to  give  its  weight  in  tons,  and,  if  it  were 
destined  overseas,  to  supply  its  cubic  measurements  for  the 
convenience  of  the  Department's  ship  loaders.  The  shipper 
had  to  describe  in  his  request  the  sort  of  cars  he  needed,  esti- 
mate the  period  within  which  the  entire  consignment  would 
leave  his  freight  platforms,  and  name  the  consignee  and  the 
railroad  or  other  carrier  which  would  probably  handle  the 
shipment  at  the  delivery  point.  He  also  had  to  certify  that 
the  property  would  be  accepted  by  the  consignee  upon  delivery 
and  promptly  unloaded  from  the  cars. 

The  Inland  Traffic  Service  studied  these  allegations  in  the 
light  of  its  sources  of  information  and  decided  whether  there 
were  need  for  the  shipment  at  that  particular  time.  Then  it 
went  further.  It  referred  the  request  to  the  embarkation  ser- 
vice officers  at  the  ports,  who  determined  whether  there  would 
be  ship  room  or  storage  room  for  the  consignment.  The  Em- 
barkation Service,  if  it  approved  the  shipment,  issued  a  so- 
called  release,  upon  which  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  based  a 
Transportation  Order,  which  it  forwarded  to  the  shipper. 

The  War  Department  Transportation  Order,  addressed  to 
the  railroad  which  served  the  shipper's  plant,  requested  the 
delivery  to  the  shipper  of  a  sufficient  number  of  cars  to  handle 
the  consignment.  This  order  was  mandatory  upon  the  rail- 
road. The  shipper  was  instructed  in  the  order  itself  to  display 
upon  the  face  of  all  bills  of  lading  and  way  bills  the  serial 
number  of  his  order,  and  the  railroad  was  forbidden  to  accept 
the  shipment  upon  a  bill  which  did  not  display  the  number. 
The  shipper  presented  the  order  to  the  local  agent  of  the  car- 
rier. If  he  experienced  difficulty  in  securing  equipment,  he  was 
instructed  to  report  the  fact  to  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  in 


124  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Washington,  which  thereupon  took  up  the  matter  directly  with 
the  Railroad  Administration.  The  shipper  was  forbidden  to 
use  cars  supplied  upon  a  Transportation  Order  for  any  other 
purpose  than  that  named  in  the  order.  The  order  allowed  the 
shipper  a  designated  period — usually  fifteen  days  for  export 
freight  and  thirty  days  for  domestic — in  which  to  load  the 
consignment  upon  cars.  The  order  became  automatically  void 
within  forty-eight  hours  after  the  expiration  of  this  period. 
If  for  any  reason — whether  through  the  fault  of  the  shipper 
in  failing  to  get  the  freight  ready  or  the  failure  of  the  railroad 
to  provide  the  equipment — the  consignment  were  not  loaded 
and  accepted  by  the  carrier  within  the  time  specified,  it  could 
not  be  moved  until  the  shipper  had  secured  a  new  order. 

This  system  of  port  releases  and  rail  Transportation  Orders 
quickly  brought  relief  to  the  military  freight  congestion  at 
the  seaboard.  It  provided  at  once  for  the  flow  of  materials 
into  the  ports  in  a  regular  order  prescribed  solely  by  the  neces- 
sities of  the  A.  E.  F.,  the  ability  of  the  port  loading  forces  to 
handle  the  commodities,  and  the  capacity  of  the  ocean  tonnage 
available.  Fresh  military  freight  no  longer  accumulated  in  the 
yards;  the  railroad  forces  at  the  terminals  were  able  to  make 
heavy  inroads  upon  the  congestion  already  existing;  and,  al- 
though the  severe  weather  conditions  persisted,  the  traffic 
steadily  cleared  up.  Each  day  brought  improvement.  By 
March  30,  1918,  the  accumulation  of  nearly  3,500  carloads 
of  war  department  freight  at  the  northern  Atlantic  ports 
had  been  reduced  to  less  than  2,000,  and  all  the  while  the 
transportation  authorities  had  been  handling  an  expanding 
stream  of  exports  through  the  embargo.  Expressed  in  other 
terms,  stagnant  war  department  freight  at  the  ports  when 
the  Inland  Traffic  Service  took  hold  amounted  to  some  150,000 
tons,  or  a  greater  weight  than  the  total  freight  shipped  to  the 
A,  E.  F.  in  the  entire  month  of  January.  Of  this  property  about 
50,000  tons,  or  one-third,  had  been  unloaded  on  the  ground  in 
order  to  release  cars  and  provide  track  room  in  the  yards.  By 
the  end  of  March  this  accumulation  had  been  reduced  at  least 
half. 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    125 

Meanwhile  the  Railroad  Administration  was  applying  simi- 
lar measures  of  relief  to  all  other  export  freight,  and  the  con- 
gestions at  the  seaboard  rapidly  cleared  away.  The  accumula- 
tion of  more  than  44,000  cars  at  the  ports  in  December  was 
cut  down  to  little  more  than  30,000  by  the  first  of  April.  At 
New  York  the  congestion  had  involved  more  than  26,000  cars. 
By  April  this  accumulation  had  been  reduced  to  16,000,  and 
by  the  following  October  it  was  below  10,000 — a  normal 
number,  considering  the  volume  of  traffic. 

The  relief  afforded  to  conditions  at  the  ports  may  be  meas- 
ured in  the  export  figures  of  supplies  shipped  to  the  A.  E.  F.* 
December  had  been  the  heaviest  export  month  for  the  War 
Department,  with  approximately  178,000  tons  of  army  sup- 
plies shipped  overseas.  In  January  the  export  fell,  as  was 
stated  above,  to  1 19,000  tons.  In  February  the  figure  was  over 
233,000  tons,  or  almost  twice  as  much  as  the  ports  had  been 
able  to  handle  in  January.  This  is  the  best  testimonial  to  the 
immediate  relief  which  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  was  able  to 
supply.  These  figures  are  but  cold  mechanical  expression  of 
an  achievement  co-equal  in  merit  with  any  other  incident  of 
the  dispatch  to  Europe,  in  little  more  than  a  year,  of 
2,000,000  American  troops  and  6,000,000  tons  of  army  sup- 
plies. In  March,  with  weather  conditions  still  adverse,  the 
export  of  war  department  freight  approached  the  300,000- 
ton  mark,  and  in  April  it  surpassed  this  record  by  over  80,000 
tons.  With  exports  continually  expanding  in  volume,  car  con- 
gestion disappeared,  and  order  took  the  place  of  confusion; 
until,  in  November,  the  War  Department  sent  over  800,000 
tons  of  freight  to  the  A.  E.  F.  All  other  essential  exporting, 
including  food  and  munitions  for  the  Allies,  kept  pace  with 
this  growth.  For  such  an  outcome,  one  thing  and  one  only  was 
to  be  thanked :  complete  control  of  inland  traffic  from  shipping 
point  to  destination. 

At  first  the  control  of  army  freight  was  exerted  only  over 
exports.  But  as  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  got  its  hand  in  and 
by  hard  work  straightened  out  the  traffic  at  the  ports,  it  found 

*  See  Appendix  C. 


126  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

time  to  take  up  other  matters;  and  then  it  rapidly  extended 
the  control  system  by  a  series  of  orders  expanding  Order  No. 
2,  until,  eventually,  embargoes  surrounded  every  principal  re- 
ceiving point  for  military  freight  in  the  United  States.  It 
became  almost  impossible  to  ship  army  supplies  anywhere 
without  running  into  an  embargo  and  the  necessity  for  secur- 
ing War  Department  Transportation  Orders.  The  Inland 
Traffic  Service  threw  its  embargoes  around  the  southern  ports 
and  those  of  the  Pacific  coast,  around  the  principal  training 
camps,  around  interior  quartermaster  depots,  around  the  larger 
artillery  proving  grounds,  and  around  some  of  the  greater 
munitions  plants — in  short,  wherever  military  supplies  con- 
verged and  were  likely  to  produce  car  congestions. 

Simultaneously  it  expanded  its  own  organization.  During 
its  first  few  weeks  of  existence  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  made 
use  of  the  traffic  organization  of  the  Ordnance  Department. 
Then  it  began  stationing  its  own  officers,  commissioned  or  civil- 
ian, at  the  principal  receiving  and  dispatching  centers  in  the 
army  supply  system,  until  eventually  it  maintained  an  office 
at  every  principal  freight-handling  point.  This  expansion  be- 
gan in  earnest  on  May  i,  1918,  on  which  day  the  service  estab- 
lished offices  at  New  York,  Chicago,  and  Jacksonville,  Florida, 
under  the  direction  of  experienced  traffic  men.  By  August  1  the 
service  had  set  up  branches  at  all  the  principal  industrial  cities 
of  the  country,  as  well  as  at  all  the  ocean  terminals.  The  out- 
side organization  handled  the  details  of  issuing  Transporta- 
tion Orders,  kept  the  central  office  advised  of  traffic  conditions 
in  the  several  districts,  and  in  general  facilitated  the  smooth 
and  rapid  operation  of  the  system. 

It  should  be  understood  that  the  control  system  applied 
only  to  the  transportation  of  military  freight  in  carload  lots. 
The  Service  at  no  time  attempted  to  direct  the  transportation 
of  consignments  that  did  not  fill  up  at  least  one  freight  car. 
But,  as  a  fact,  the  great  bulk  of  military  supplies  moved  in 
solid  cars.  Even  in  the  aggregate,  the  less-than-carload  ship- 
ments of  army  materials  were  negligible;  and  they  had  never 
been  a  chief  contributing  cause  of  freight  congestion.  The 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    127 

reader  will  see  here  an  analogy  to  the  military  handling  of 
passenger  traffic :  the  troop-movement  office,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, did  not  concern  itself  with  the  travel  of  soldiers  in 
parties  of  less  than  fifty  men. 

As  an  aid  to  the  management  of  military  freight  traffic,  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service  created  within  itself  the  useful  car- 
record  office  and  tracing  bureau.  This  subsidiary  kept  track  of 
all  loaded  cars  of  army  freight  and  watched  their  progress  from 
origin  to  destination.  The  work  of  the  car-record  office  re- 
quired the  energies  of  a  force  of  from  fifty  to  seventy-five 
men,  most  of  them  men  of  railroad  experience.  The  bureau 
worked  out  a  method  which  enabled  it  to  know  at  all  times 
the  approximate  location  of  every  war  department  car.  Its 
field  organization  amounted  to  a  live-tracer  system  stationed 
permanently  along  tracks  at  the  principal  junctions.  Each 
agent  of  the  office  reported  by  telegraph  or  long-distance  tele- 
phone upon  every  important  shipment  when  it  reached  or  left 
his  station,  and  thus  the  central  office  at  Washington  usually 
knew  within,  at  most,  200  miles  the  whereabouts  of  every 
one  of  its  cars.  With  such  a  system,  it  was  impossible  for  cars 
to  get  lost  in  transit  or  even  to  be  greatly  delayed. 

The  car-tracing  bureau  was  of  great  service  to  the  Govern- 
ment in  that  it  enabled  the  quick  diversion  of  freight,  if  that 
at  any  time  became  necessary.  And  it  was  frequently  necessary. 
The  presence  of  enemy  submarines  off  the  Atlantic  coast  dur- 
ing the  summer  of  1918  and  the  continued  inroads  of  the  U- 
boats  upon  allied  shipping  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic 
often  entirely  changed  the  sailing  plans  on  this  side,  in  which 
event  it  became  necessary  to  divert  supplies  from  one  port  to 
another.  With  immediate  knowledge  of  the  approximate  posi- 
tion of  all  freight  on  the  rails,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  could 
direct  the  flow  of  traffic  into  one  port  or  another,  exactly  as  a 
fireman  aims  the  nozzle  of  a  hose.  Thousands  of  cars  were,  in 
fact,  so  diverted.  At  one  time,  cargo  transports  were  approach- 
ing the  Atlantic  coast  to  make  up  a  convoy  which  was  to  load 
at  New  York  with  supplies  for  the  A.  E.  F.,  including  a  large 
quantity  of  flour;  and  a  hundred  or  more  cars  of  this  export 


128  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

flour  were  on  the  rails  traveling  from  Minneapolis  to  the  port. 
At  the  last  moment  Washington  issued  an  order  which  re- 
quired the  flour  ship  to  load  at  Newport  News.  Under  the  old 
system,  this  change  would  have  resulted  in  great  delay  while 
tracers  were  running  down  the  carloads  of  flour  and  changing 
their  destination.  Many  of  the  cars,  doubtless,  would  have 
reached  New  York  and  lost  themselves  in  the  accumulation 
of  freight  cars  in  the  yards.  As  it  was,  the  Inland  Traffic  Ser- 
vice caught  all  of  these  hundred  cars  within  a  few  hours  and 
diverted  them  so  that  they  arrived  at  Newport  News  almost 
as  quickly  as  they  would  have  arrived  at  New  York,  allowing 
only  for  the  greater  distance  they  had  to  travel. 

Baled  hay  was  a  commodity  frequently  subject  to  diversion, 
simply  because  the  number  of  horses  and  mules  at  a  given  camp 
was  continually  fluctuating.  A  camp  quartermaster  might  esti- 
mate the  amount  of  hay  which  the  camp  animals  would  require 
for  a  certain  period  and  make  requisition  for  this  forage.  By 
the  time  the  commodity  had  been  shipped,  the  exigencies  of 
the  service  might  have  transferred  many  of  the  animals  to 
some  other  camp,  and  the  quantity  of  hay  en  route  would  no 
longer  be  needed  at  that  point.  Then  it  became  the  duty  of 
the  car-record  office  to  find  the  shipment  and  divert  it  to  some 
point  of  fresh  demand.  The  sooner  such  diversion  was  accom- 
plished, the  sooner  the  railroad  equipment  would  be  released 
for  other  work.  A  great  deal  of  the  efficiency  of  military  con- 
trol of  freight  traffic  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  was  in  such  instant  touch  with  the  traffic  on 
the  rails. 

The  survey  made  by  the  Service  immediately  after  its 
establishment  in  January,  1918,  uncovered  a  number  of 
traffic  abuses  which  had  sprung  up  under  the  cloak  of  mili- 
tary necessity.  It  is  hard  for  the  average  citizen  to  understand 
the  spirit  of  a  person  who  can  see  in  the  extremity  of  a  coun- 
try fighting  for  its  existence  an  opportunity  to  make  money 
by  fraud.  Yet  such  scurrilous  practice  was  by  no  means  rare. 
It  existed,  not  only  in  transportation,  but  elsewhere  in  war 
industry.  The  munitions  production  bureaus  soon  learned  that 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    129 

there  were  manufacturers  base  enough  to  secure  government 
contracts  solely  for  the  sake  of  the  right  which  such  contracts 
gave  them  to  draw  upon  the  supplies  of  raw  materials.  Such  a 
manufacturer,  once  he  had  obtained  his  raw  materials,  would 
default  in  the  contract  and  use  the  materials  in  making  up 
finished  products  for  his  private  customers. 

Fortunately,  such  instances  were  not  many.  But  when  it 
came  to  securing  transportation  privileges,  it  seemed  that  any 
number  of  shippers  were  willing  to  employ  devious  means  to 
thwart  the  traffic-regulating  orders.  The  commonest  practice 
was  to  take  advantage  of  the  preference  given  to  freight  billed 
through  to  officers  of  the  Army.  This  abuse  occurred  in  the  days 
before  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  had  extended  its  transporta- 
tion order  system  to  cover  all  army  freight,  regardless  of  its 
destination.  In  those  times  the  unscrupulous  shipper  who  had 
a  consignment  of  goods  for  a  private  customer  in  some  city 
would  bill  the  freight  to  an  army  officer  or  war  department 
bureau  at  that  destination.  The  railroad,  accepting  the  freight 
as  bona  fide  military  supplies,  would  give  it  preference  over 
commercial  freight  and  put  it  through  rapidly.  The  actual 
consignee  at  the  other  end,  who  was  likely  the  local  agent  of 
the  shipper,  would  present  the  bill  of  lading  and  secure  the 
goods.  In  other  instances,  shippers  who  had  held  government 
contracts  continued  to  use  the  contract  numbers  to  secure  rail 
priorities  long  after  they  had  completed  their  deliveries  to  the 
War  Department. 

In  fairness  to  American  industry  it  must  be  said  that  no 
large  or  reputable  concern  stooped  to  such  methods.  Yet  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service  found  hundreds  of  such  frauds  perpe- 
trated by  the  smaller  and  less  scrupulous  companies.  Often 
the  officers  named  as  consignees  were  wholly  fictitious,  and 
the  railroads  themselves  sometimes  became  suspicious  of  cer- 
tain shipments.  After  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  was  formed, 
the  railroads  began  to  report  suspected  shipments.  The  Ser- 
vice issued  warnings  to  shippers  throughout  the  country,  un- 
leashed the  legal  forces  of  the  Government  upon  those  who 
disregarded  the  warnings,  and  thus  gradually  eliminated  the 


130  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

abuses.  The  extension  of  the  transportation  order  system  over 
the  United  States  also  aided  in  checking  fraud. 

Another  conspicuous  abuse,  already  cited,  was  the  extrava- 
gant and  ill-advised  employment  of  the  express  service  in 
the  transportation  of  war  department  property.  This  abuse, 
although  not  venal,  was  a  source  of  considerable  needless 
expense  to  the  Government.  It  was  due,  oftener  than  to  any- 
thing else,  to  lack  of  good  judgment  on  the  part  of  army  offi- 
cers. Officers  soon  discovered  that  they  could  put  their  ship- 
ments through  to  destination  much  more  quickly  by  express 
than  by  freight,  particularly  during  the  months  when  the 
freight  traffic  was  staggering.  There  ensued  the  most  absurd 
uses  of  the  express.  The  carload  express  shipment  became 
common;  it  was  not  unusual  for  an  officer  to  ship  an  entire 
trainload  of  freight  by  express.  The  charges  on  such  shipments 
were,  of  course,  enormous.  More  important,  the  express  sys- 
tem became  so  overloaded  that  it  could  not  perform  its  really 
useful  function  of  putting  through  emergency  shipments  with 
dispatch.  As  the  indefensible  practice  continued,  it  actually 
became  true  that  express  service  was  often  slower  than  freight. 

Officers  who  abused  the  express  privilege  seemed  on  occa- 
sion to  exercise  no  judgment  or  discrimination  at  all.  Numer- 
ous heavy  articles  for  the  A.  E.  F.,  such  as  automobiles, 
machinery  of  various  sorts,  freight  cars,  and  box  cars  for  the 
American  military  railroads  in  France,  were  sometimes  shipped 
to  the  ports  as  parts,  there  to  be  set  up  and  assembled  before 
being  loaded  on  the  ships.  Zealous  supply  officers  frequently 
shipped  component  parts  of  these  articles  by  express  before 
some  of  the  more  important  parts  had  even  been  manufac- 
tured. One  officer  attempted  to  ship  to  Brooklyn  by  express  a 
consignment  of  electric  warehouse  trucks  for  use  at  the  new 
army  base  in  South  Brooklyn.  At  that  time  the  warehouses  in 
Brooklyn  were  nothing  but  concrete  shells,  empty  and  even 
floorless ;  and  the  working  force  at  the  base  was  to  have  no  use 
for  warehouse  trucks  for  another  half  year. 

The  prize  example  was  the  shipment  by  an  American  officer 
of  nearly  fifty  express  carloads  of  iron  cots  from  Pittsburg 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    131 

and  Atlanta  to  a  hospital  under  construction  in  Texas.  The 
hospital  was  not  only  not  ready  for  the  beds,  but  there  was 
not  even  unloading  space  for  them,  and  they  had  to  remain 
in  the  express  cars  at  El  Paso  for  six  weeks  before  covered 
storage  could  be  provided. 

The  express  abuse  was  broken  up  by  an  order  of  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service,  an  outright  prohibition  of  the  shipment  by 
express  of  any  war  department  consignment  weighing  more 
than  1,000  pounds.  To  send  any  heavier  consignment  by  ex- 
press, it  was  necessary  for  the  shipper  to  secure  a  War  Depart- 
ment Transportation  Order,  which  gave  the  Inland  Traffic 
Service  the  right  of  vise  in  the  matter.  This  measure  cleared 
up  the  express  situation  at  once,  saved  enormous  sums  of 
money  for  the  Government,  and  enabled  the  War  Department 
to  make  full  use  of  the  express  as  an  emergency  service. 

After  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  had  extended  its  organi- 
zation throughout  the  country,  it  became  a  master  of  Ameri- 
can freight  traffic,  although  war  department  traffic  per  se  was 
but  a  minor  percentage  of  the  total  volume.  The  Army  gained 
this  eminence  largely  because  of  the  personality  of  the  chief 
of  the  Service,  Mr.  H.  M.  Adams.  Mr.  Adams  was  universally 
recognized  as  one  of  the  ablest  traffic  men  in  the  United 
States.  He  had  been  the  vice-president  in  charge  of  traffic  of 
several  important  railroads,  and  after  his  retirement  from  the 
government  service  in  1919  he  became  vice-president  and  gen- 
eral traffic  manager  of  the  Missouri  Pacific  Railroad.  Railroad 
men  not  only  had  complete  confidence  in  his  judgment,  but 
they  recognized  in  him  a  man  actuated  only  by  the  highest  of 
patriotic  ideals  and  by  a  stern  sense  of  duty. 

The  relation  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  to  the  railroads 
was  technically  advisory  and  not  mandatory.  The  mandatory 
power  existed  only  in  the  United  States  Railroad  Administra- 
tion. The  Inland  Traffic  Service  could  order  only  the  actions 
of  war  department  shippers  and  consignees :  the  cooperation  of 
the  railroads  it  had  to  request  through  the  Railroad  Adminis- 
tration. The  Railroad  Administration  controlled  the  war  traffic 
through  a  committee  of  traffic  men,  each  representing  one 


132  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

function  of  the  Government.  Mr.  Adams  was  the  war  depart- 
ment representative  on  this  committee,  to  which  the  Navy, 
the  Food  and  Fuel  Administrations,  the  War  Industries  Board, 
and  all  the  other  war  organizations  which  had  a  special  interest 
in  transportation  sent  their  traffic  officers.  These  men  were 
the  best  the  nation's  railroads  could  supply  to  the  Govern- 
ment. It  is  no  disparagement  of  them  to  say  that  Mr.  Adams 
was  at  least  the  peer  in  ability  of  any  man  on  the  committee. 
Because  of  his  commanding  position  in  the  railroad  world,  his 
advice  or  recommendation  acquired  the  weight  of  a  command. 

War  department  traffic  was  so  interknit  with  other  traffic 
that  it  was  impossible  to  separate  it  from  the  operational 
whole.  The  army  traffic  could  not  be  directed  efficiently  unless 
all  the  other  traffic  were  efficient  and  minded  to  cooperate. 
At  one  time  the  War  Department  had  great  difficulty  in  secur- 
ing lumber  for  its  construction  projects;  in  fact,  there  was  no 
lumber  to  be  had.  The  producers  preferred  to  utilize  the 
limited  transportation  facilities  to  take  care  of  their  own  cus- 
tomers ahead  of  the  Government.  Mr.  Adams  employed  dras- 
tic means  to  correct  this  situation.  He  asked  the  Railroad 
Administration  to  put  down  a  complete  embargo  upon  the 
shipment  of  lumber  to  any  consignee  other  than  the  Govern- 
ment. The  Railroad  Administration  acceded  to  this  request  and 
maintained  the  lumber  embargo  for  about  five  months.  This 
was  the  greatest  commodity  embargo  imposed  during  the  war 
through  the  agency  of  the  Inland  Traffic  Service;  but  it  was 
only  one  of  several  for  which  Mr.  Adams  was  responsible. 
When,  at  the  expiration  of  his  service,  the  Government 
awarded  a  Distinguished  Service  Medal  to  Mr.  Adams,  it  was 
the  consensus  of  opinion  in  the  Transportation  Service  that 
honor  had  been  rendered  where  honor  was  due. 

Prior  to  the  assumption  by  the  Government  of  the  opera- 
tion of  American  railroads,  every  shipper  in  the  United  States 
had  possessed  the  right  to  route  his  shipments  to  their  destina- 
tions exactly  as  he  chose.  The  routing  of  freight  traffic  is  a 
distinct  branch  of  modern  industrial  science.  All  large  con- 
cerns maintain  their  own  traffic  experts,  a  considerable  part 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    133 

of  whose  duty  it  is  to  see  that  freight  is  routed  for  the  quick- 
est possible  journey,  or  for  the  lowest  possible  rate,  or  for 
both.  It  was  this  shippers'  privilege,  combined  with  the  initia- 
tive of  the  independent  railroad  lines  in  securing  business  for 
themselves,  that  resulted  in  the  periodical  congestions  of 
certain  roads.  The  United  States  Railroad  Administration  at 
once  ended  this  routing  privilege  and  allowed  the  traffic  to 
follow  lines  of  least  resistance — that  is,  to  flow  over  the  lightly 
used  tracks  when  the  more  heavily  traveled  ones  were  taxed  to 
capacity.  In  conformity  with  this  new  practice,  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  established  its  own  routing  section,  which 
acted  for  war  department  freight  much  as  the  routing 
division  of  the  troop-movement  office  did  for  the  human  per- 
sonnel. The  care  of  the  freight- routing  section  was  directed 
principally  to  the  ends  that  terminal  lines  should  not  be  con- 
gested and  that  service  generally  should  be  improved.  Another 
and  more  specific  function  of  this  service  was  to  operate  spe- 
cial freight  trains  carrying  high  explosives  or  poisonous  gas — 
things  forbidden  space  in  mixed  trains — and  also  to  operate 
special  trains  loaded  with  supplies  peculiarly  important  to  the 
Army. 

Just  as  the  troop-movement  general  agents  at  the  camps 
procured  passenger  equipment  and  supervised  the  loading  of 
men  on  trains,  so  the  traffic  agents  stationed  at  these  same 
camps  by  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  became  the  local  freight 
managers.  They  secured  the  needed  cars,  arranged  for  the 
switching,  took  charge  of  making  out  freight  bills  and  of 
accomplishing  bills  of  lading  on  inbound  shipments,  and  saw 
to  the  prompt  settlement  of  freight  charges.  No  figures  yet 
made  available  show  the  total  war  department  freight  traffic 
in  the  interior  of  the  country;  but  Appendix  D  of  this  work, 
which  reproduces  the  traffic  statement  from  Camp  Grant,  at 
Rockford,  Illinois, — a  cantonment  which  may  be  considered 
typical  of  the  training  camps, — indicates  the  amount  of  work 
which  devolved  upon  the  Inland  Traffic  Service's  manager  at 
a  single  camp. 

When  the  export  movement  was  at  its  height,  in  1918,  the 


134  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

average  daily  volume  of  war  freight  of  all  kinds  going  into 
New  York  was  1,000  cars.  This  was  at  least  the  equivalent 
of  20  freight  trains  daily.  As  many  as  6,500  carloads  were 
within  the  New  York  yardage  at  one  time,  but  in  orderly 
movement,  so  that  they  by  no  means  constituted  a  congestion. 
In  order  to  keep  track  of  the  freight  situation,  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  maintained  at  New  York  a  large  force  of  civil- 
ian and  commissioned  personnel  to  check  up  the  traffic  con- 
tinually and  keep  Washington  informed.  Similar,  though 
smaller,  organizations  at  the  other  principal  ports  rendered 
direct  reports  twice  a  day  by  telegraph  or  long-distance 
telephone. 

The  handling  of  traffic  in  the  interior  portions  of  the  coun- 
try was  in  itself  a  vast  undertaking.  The  war  set  in  motion 
traffic  currents  where  none  had  run  before.  The  establishment 
of  such  enormous  institutions  as  the  powder  plants  at  Nitro, 
West  Virginia,  and  Nashville,  Tennessee,  and  the  projected 
ordnance  plant  at  Neville  Island,  near  Pittsburg,  suddenly 
created  new  production  areas;  and  every  training  camp  in  the 
country  was  in  effect  a  new  city  consuming  great  volumes  of 
supplies.  The  powder  plant  at  Nashville  became  an  industrial 
center  as  large  as  Wilmington,  Delaware,  and  required  the 
construction  of  nearly  two  hundred  miles  of  switches  and 
sidings  in  its  railroad  yards.  Some  of  these  new  producing  and 
consuming  centers  were  situated  at  places  without  adequate 
railroad  facilities.  Camp  Shelby,  Mississippi,  for  instance,  was 
located  on  a  logging  railroad  which  had  operated  only  one 
commercial  train  a  week  before  the  camp  was  set  up.  It  was 
necessary  for  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  to  provide  the  facili- 
ties to  handle  the  freight  traffic  at  such  points.  This  it  some- 
times did  by  operating  shuttle  trains  in  and  out  of  the  camps, 
to  bring  in  loaded  freight  cars  from  the  nearest  points  which 
had  good  railroad  advantages. 

There  arose,  too,  a  tremendous  import  traffic  in  raw  mate- 
rials for  war  department  plants.  Where  America  had  imported 
a  hundred  tons  of  Chilean  nitrates  in  the  past,  she  now  began 
importing  four  hundred  tons.  The  nitrate  shipments  came  in 


ARMY  SOLVES  ITS  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    135 

mostly  through  southern  ports.  When  the  system  of  control 
was  in  full  operation,  it  required  a  Transportation  Order  to 
move  a  shipment  of  nitrates  out  of  a  port  to  an  interior  powder 
factory.  The  system  worked  both  ways:  it  prevented  conges- 
tion at  the  interior  producing  point  just  as  efficaciously  as  at 
the  port. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SOLVING  THE  NATIONAL  WAR  FREIGHT 
PROBLEM 

HOWEVER  admirable  the  system  of  the  Inland  Traffic 
Service  for  the  control  of  war  department  freight 
traffic,  it  would  have  had  no  such  decisive  results  un- 
less the  general  freight  congestion  in  the  United  States  had 
been  relieved.  While  the  War  Department  was  putting  into 
effect  its  own  regulations  for  the  efficient  transportation  of 
military  property,  the  United  States  Railroad  Administration 
was  applying  similar  measures  to  the  national  traffic  situation. 
War  department  property  constituted  probably  not  more 
than  one-tenth  of  the  volume  of  freight  involved  in  the  con- 
gestion at  the  Atlantic  ports,  and  perhaps  even  a  smaller  per- 
centage of  the  interior  accumulations.  The  War  Department 
insisted  upon  preferential  treatment  for  its  cars  in  transit ;  but 
there  were  other  essential  governmental  agencies,  all  of  them 
similarly  pressing  for  the  movement  of  their  various  commodi- 
ties. The  Navy  had  to  move  large  volumes  of  supplies,  not 
only  for  its  ships,  but  also  for  its  training  camps  and  other 
land  establishments,  which  multiplied  after  the  declaration 
of  war.  The  Shipping  Board  was  encouraging,  financially  and 
by  direct  cooperation,  the  construction  of  shipyards  up  and 
down  both  coasts  and  the  building  of  ships  in  those  yards. 
Shipyard  construction  materials  and  ship  timbers,  ship  steel, 
and  ship  machinery  made  up  an  impressive  part  of  the  total 
volume  of  traffic.  The  Food  Administration,  charged  as  it 
was  with  the  duty  of  supplying  food  to  the  Allies,  pressed 
for  the  transportation  of  its  commodities.  The  Fuel  Adminis- 
tration was  no  less  urgent  that  the  mines  should  have  full 
traffic  facilities.  The  War  Industries  Board  was  concerned 


SOLVING  NATIONAL  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    137 

with  the  freight  movement  of  materials  to  the  munitions 
plants;  and  so  on.  Each  of  these  great  organizations  main- 
tained an  aggressive  traffic  bureau  and  fought  against  the 
others  for  priorities  in  transit.  The  competition  of  these  agen- 
cies contributed  largely  to  the  throttling  of  traffic  at  the  onset 
of  winter  in  December,  1917.  The  railroads  and  their  emer- 
gency war  committees  had  been  unable  to  decide  equitably 
among  such  competitors;  moreover,  they  had  possessed  no 
mechanism  for  the  control  of  traffic  at  its  sources.  They  could 
not  forbid  shipment:  they  could  only  stop  traffic  when  it 
reached  the  barriers  of  an  embargo. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  United  States  Railroad  Admin- 
istration, therefore,  was  to  coordinate  the  entire  government 
demand  for  freight-movement  facilities.  The  Director  General 
appointed  a  manager  of  inland  traffic  for  each  principal  war 
agency.  Mr.  Adams  was  the  appointee  for  the  War  Depart- 
ment; the  others  were  men  of  like  caliber.  The  traffic  manager 
appointed  for  the  Navy  was  Mr.  H.  P.  Anewalt,  who  had  been 
general  freight  agent  of  the  Santa  Fe  Railroad.  The  Director 
General  took  from  the  Burlington  Railroad  its  vice-president, 
Mr.  C.  E.  Spens,  and  made  him  traffic  manager  for  the  Food 
Administration.  Mr.  F.  M.  Whitaker,  vice-president  of  the 
Chesapeake  &  Ohio,  became  traffic  manager  for  the  Fuel  Ad- 
ministration. Mr.  T.  C.  Powell,  vice-president  of  the  Southern 
Railroad,  served  the  War  Industries  Board.  Mr.  D.  L.  Gray 
was  taken  from  the  Erie  Railroad,  where  he  had  been  the 
general  traffic  manager,  and  put  in  charge  of  the  traffic  of  the 
United  States  Shipping  Board. 

These  men  were  among  the  greatest  transportation  experts 
of  the  country.  They  and  their  staffs  came  to  the  Government 
as  loans  from  the  railroads.  They  were  put  on  the  pay  roll  of 
the  Railroad  Administration,  but  each  one  of  them  was  sub- 
ject to  the  orders  of  the  war  organization  in  which  he  was 
placed.  Meeting  once  a  week,  these  managers  constituted, 
within  the  Railroad  Administration,  a  traffic  committee  for 
arranging  priorities  and  allocating  the  transportation  facili- 
ties among  the  several  bureaus  and  departments.  This  was 


138  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

probably  the  most  expert  traffic  committee  ever  assembled 
for  executive  action.  Every  man  on  it  was  preeminent  in  his 
field. 

The  weekly  committee  meeting  knit  into  one  administra- 
tive unit  the  entire  sum  of  the  Government's  traffic  interests. 
Although  in  general  the  War  Department  was  given  priority, 
particularly  in  shipments  for  export,  the  committee  could  and 
did  drive  in  any  particular  direction  where  energetic  action 
was  needed.  Its  flexibility  was  never  better  shown  than  in  a 
traffic  accomplishment  late  in  the  winter  of  1918,  when  the 
United  States  literally  saved  the  Allies  from  collapse  by  an 
extraordinary  delivery  of  food  at  a  crisis. 

In  February,  1918,  the  ambassadors  of  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Italy  jointly  sent  an  invitation  to  the  Director 
General  of  Railroads  to  hear  a  message  of  grave  importance 
sent  from  their  respective  prime  ministers.  Mr.  McAdoo,  un- 
able to  attend  the  meeting,  sent  Mr.  C.  R.  Gray,  the  Director 
of  Railroad  Operations.  To  Mr.  Gray  the  ambassadors  read 
messages  to  the  effect  that  America  had  fallen  nearly  a  million 
tons  short  of  the  program  of  supplying  foodstuffs  to  the  Allies. 
The  notes  were  strikingly  similar  in  their  expression  of  hope 
that  in  some  way  America  might  be  able  to  make  good  the 
deficit.  One  dispatch  concluded  with  the  statement  that  the 
dearth  of  wheat  abroad  was  "the  greatest  danger  threatening 
the  allied  nations  of  Europe."  Another  prime  minister  cabled 
that,  if  the  deficit  could  not  be  made  up,  the  war  would  be 
over  by  April  1.  There  was  just  one  month  in  which  to  save 
the  situation. 

Through  the  traffic  committee  the  Food  Administration 
readily  secured  priorities  to  cover  this  enormous  shipment. 
The  various  federal  boards,  departments,  and  administrations 
represented  on  the  committee  agreed  to  use  other  lines  for 
the  transport  of  their  Atlantic  seaboard  freight,  leaving  the 
New  York  Central  Railroad  artery,  with  all  four  of  its  tracks 
if  necessar3%  open  exclusively  for  the  transportation  of  export 
wheat  and  other  foods.  In  the  emergency  the  Railroad  Admin- 
istration committed  the  traffic  heresy  of  sending  box  cars 


SOLVING  NATIONAL  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    139 

empty  from  the  East  to  the  grain  centers  of  the  Middle  West. 
It  also  adopted  the  drastic  rule  that  until  further  notice  there 
should  be  no  commercial  loading  of  box  cars  anywhere  in 
eastern  territory,  except  for  the  movement  of  essential  food 
and  fuel.  The  cars  thus  made  available  were  rushed  westward 
in  solid  trains;  and,  although  the  blizzard  conditions  still  per- 
sisted, the  New  York  Central  was  kept  open,  and  a  flood  of 
wheat  descended  upon  New  York. 

The  British,  upon  whom  devolved  the  burden  of  freight- 
ing this  food  across  the  ocean,  were  caught  unprepared  for 
what  actually  occurred.  The  Admiralty  had  sent  to  New  York 
cargo  vessels  of  total  capacity  much  beyond  what  it  thought 
the  Americans  could  fill.  Yet  by  March  15,  one  month  and  one 
week  after  the  cry  for  help  had  been  heard,  every  available 
ship  had  been  loaded  and  sent  out,  every  grain  elevator  on  the 
Atlantic  coast  was  crammed  to  capacity,  and  in  addition  the 
excess  supply  of  food  at  the  seaboard  filled  6,615  ^^^^  ^^  the 
sidetracks.  In  fact,  it  became  necessary  for  the  Railroad  Admin- 
istration to  threaten  an  embargo  upon  export  food  unless  the 
Allies  could  improve  the  ocean  shipping  situation.  In  the  three 
or  four  weeks  of  greatest  activity,  civilian  traffic  was  suspended 
almost  altogether;  indeed,  there  was  a  period  of  more  than  a 
fortnight  when,  except  for  the  transportation  of  necessary 
food  and  fuel,  print  paper,  and  freight  of  a  few  minor 
classes,  the  ordinary  commerce  of  the  East  and  the  Northwest 
was  totally  arrested.  Of  government  property,  only  that  of 
the  War  Department  moved  in  this  interval.  Such  a  feat  would 
have  been  utterly  impossible  in  the  days  before  the  united 
control  of  freight  traffic. 

The  Railroad  Administration  adopted  for  all  inland  com- 
merce a  system  almost  identical  with  that  by  which  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  handled  war  department  freight.  The  Trans- 
portation Order,  to  be  sure,  did  not  exist  in  commercial  traffic, 
but  in  its  place  appeared  the  shipping  permit,  which  was  essen- 
tially the  same  thing.  The  Railroad  Administration  main- 
tained, first  at  New  York  and  then  elsewhere,  as  the  system 
expanded,  local  freight  committees  of  railroad  representatives. 


140  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Before  a  producer  in  any  part  of  the  country  could  ship  freight 
into  a  terminal,  or  even  secure  cars  from  the  railroads,  he 
had  to  obtain  a  permit  from  the  freight  committee  at  the 
terminal.  This  committee,  in  intimate  touch  with  its  local  situ- 
ation, knew  approximately  whether  freight  could  be  handled 
promptly  upon  arrival.  The  shipper  who  applied  for  a  permit 
was  required  to  show  that  his  freight  would  be  accepted  and 
unloaded  immediately  by  the  consignee.  The  committee  could 
check  up  his  statements.  The  general  system  of  embargo  was 
extended  to  cover  all  centers  where  congestions  were  likely 
to  arise,  and  the  permit  was  the  only  key  to  the  door. 

When  the  Railroad  Administration  took  hold,  nearly 
a  quarter  of  a  million  freight  cars  were  caught  in  the  various 
congestions  and  accumulations  at  the  seaboard  and  throughout 
the  United  States.  That  is  to  say,  there  was  that  number  of 
cars  loaded  and  on  the  rails,  but  not  running  currently  with 
the  traffic,  and  serving  perforce  as  mere  places  of  storage  for 
the  goods  which  they  contained.  This  was  ten  per  cent  or  more 
of  the  entire  car  equipment  of  the  United  States.  The  removal 
of  so  many  cars  from  the  traffic  constituted  a  grave  embarrass- 
ment to  the  whole  transportation  system.  The  centralized  con- 
trol of  the  railroads  reduced  this  accumulation  steadily,  until 
in  the  following  winter  (1918-1919)  there  were  less  than 
30,000  cars  so  tied  up. 

The  management  of  the  rolling  stock  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  car-service  section  of  the  Railroad  Administration,  an 
organization  which  had  formerly  been  the  commission  on  car 
service,  a  subsidiary  branch  of  the  American  Railroad  Asso- 
ciation's Committee  of  Five.  This  organization  herded  all 
freight  cars  together  according  to  class,  without  regard  to 
ownership,  and  made  the  entire  American  freight  equipment 
fluid  for  the  first  time  in  history,  sending  rolling  stock  at  dif- 
ferent seasons  and  intervals  to  sections  of  the  country  where 
large  freight  movements  were  impending.  The  result  was  that, 
in  the  summer  of  1918,  in  spite  of  the  enormous  war  traffic, 
the  American  public,  for  the  first  time  in  years,  heard  nothing 


SOLVING  NATIONAL  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    141 

about  car  shortages  or  the  inability  of  the  railroads  to  move 
the  seasonal  tonnage. 

Wheat,  for  instance,  had  for  years  clogged  the  railroad 
channels  at  the  time  of  its  heaviest  movement,  creating  car 
shortages  outside  the  wheat  belt  and  congestions  within  it  that 
hampered  the  easy  flow  of  the  crop  to  the  market.  In  Septem- 
ber, 1918,  when  the  wheat  crop  started  to  move,  the  Railroad 
Administration  threw  embargoes  around  each  of  the  twenty 
largest  receiving  wheat  centers  of  the  United  States.  Traffic 
committees  were  established  in  these  centers,  and  the  shippers 
of  grain  were  required  to  secure  permits  from  the  committees 
in  order  to  obtain  cars.  This  system  kept  the  terminals  clear. 
Meanwhile  the  car-service  section  rounded  up  box  cars  for  the 
grain  districts  from  wherever  they  could  be  got,  and  the 
wheat  crop  was  moved  with  unprecedented  speed  and  effi- 
ciency. Formerly,  just  in  advance  of  harvest  time,  the  rail- 
roads had  seized  whatever  empty  cars  were  upon  their  rails 
and  held  them  for  the  protection  of  their  own  shippers  during 
the  crop  movement.  Under  federal  control,  empty  cars  moving 
westward  for  grain  could  not  be  stopped  in  Ohio  or  Illinois 
until  the  grain  in  those  states  was  actually  at  the  rails  for  load- 
ing. This  prohibition  permitted  plenty  of  cars  to  go  on  into  dis- 
tricts where  the  harvest  had  already  begun,  and  federal  control 
followed  the  harvest  northward  with  equipment  as  it  pro- 
gressed. 

The  car-service  section  maintained  an  officer  in  Chicago  who 
had  charge  of  the  operation  of  the  common  pool  of  refrigerator 
cars.  Formerly  each  road  which  owned  refrigerator  cars  pro- 
tected them  from  use  by  other  roads.  The  pooling  of  rail  re- 
frigeration put  adequate  equipment  at  the  disposal  of  any 
given  shipping  territory;  and  in  1918,  almost  for  the  first  time, 
the  perishable  food  crops  moved  expeditiously. 

The  management  of  the  railroads  as  a  unit  resulted  in  other 
great  reforms  in  freight  traffic.  Summer  is  ordinarily  the  slack 
time  on  the  railroads,  and  the  Railroad  Administration  took 
advantage  of  this  fact  to  anticipate  the  forthcoming  industrial 
demands  for  raw  materials.  The  paper  mills  in  the  northern 


142  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

part  of  the'  United  States  import  great  quantities  of  pulp  wood 
from  Canada.  Ordinarily  this  traffic  has  been  heaviest  in  early 
autumn.  By  May,  1918,  the  car-service  section  began  shipping 
empty  box  cars  to  Canada  for  pulp  wood.  The  movement  con- 
tinued all  summer,  involving  the  transit  of  over  70,000  cars, 
an  average  of  over  500  cars,  or  ten  trains,  a  day.  By  October  1, 
1918,  the  American  supply  of  pulp  wood  in  Canada  was  en- 
tirely cleaned  up  for  the  first  time  in  many  years,  and  that  in 
the  midst  of  an  abnormal  war  traffic  which  might  have  been 
expected  to  impede  ordinary  commercial  transportation. 

The  Railroad  Administration  induced  the  American  chemi- 
cal plants,  which  had  suffered  severely  for  raw  materials  dur- 
ing the  winter  of  1917-1918,  to  lay  in  their  phosphate  rock 
from  Tennessee  and  Florida  during  the  summer  months.  In 
October,  1918,  there  was  a  reserve  of  half  a  million  tons  of 
rock  at  the  chemical  plants,  and  meanwhile  the  daily  shipments 
were  meeting  current  requirements. 

The  war  vastly  increased  the  demand  of  American  chemical 
plants  for  sulphur,  which  is  produced  in  Louisiana  and  Texas. 
The  munitions-manufacturing  program  of  1918-1919  called 
for  the  shipment  of  1,800,000  tons  of  sulphur  from  the  Gulf 
coast  to  the  mills  in  the  North.  The  Shipping  Board  agreed 
to  transport  600,000  tons  by  water,  leaving  1,200,000  tons 
for  the  rails.  This  meant  an  average  haulage  of  100  carloads 
a  day — four  times  the  rate  at  which  rail  transportation  had 
been  required  to  bring  sulphur  north  during  any  pre-war 
year.  By  meeting  the  situation  in  advance  and  by  directing  the 
pooled  car  equipment  into  the  sulphur-producing  region,  the 
Government's  program  had  been  completely  met  by  October 
15;  and  the  railroads  even  handled  more  than  they  had  con- 
tracted to  do,  for,  as  it  turned  out,  the  Shipping  Board  was 
unable  to  carry  its  full  allotment. 

The  car-service  section  also  watched  new  producing  areas 
created  by  the  war  effort  and  kept  them  well  stocked  with 
rolling  equipment.  One  of  the  greatest  of  these  areas  was  the 
fir  and  spruce  district  of  the  Pacific  Northwest,  from  which 
great  quantities  of  ship  timbers,  construction  lumber,  and  the 


SOLVING  NATIONAL  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    143 

vitally  necessary  aviation  lumber  were  sent  to  various  con- 
suming districts.  In  all,  150,000  cars  of  lumber  moved  out 
of  this  district  by  the  middle  of  November,  1918;  of  these, 
12,700  carried  spruce  to  the  airplane  factories.  The  average 
daily  movement  amounted  to  813  cars. 

Coal  was  another  commodity  which  required  most  careful 
control  in  transit.  Competition  in  the  bituminous  coal  industry 
had  set  up  a  great  deal  of  cross-hauling,  a  sheer  waste  of  trans- 
portation not  to  be  tolerated  in  war  times.  Illinois  mines  would 
sell  coal  to  the  East,  Pennsylvania  mines  to  the  Northwest,  and 
so  on.  The  Railroad  Administration,  in  cooperation  with  the 
Fuel  Administration,  mapped  the  country  into  zones  and  for- 
bade the  shipment  of  coal  outside  these  zones.  Numerous  com- 
panies and  railroads  which  handled  coal  to  the  lower  Lake 
and  Atlantic  ports  owned  their  own  coal-car  equipment  and, 
in  the  days  of  individual  operation,  clung  to  it  jealously. 
Traffic  inefficiency  resulted;  for  one  owner  of  cars  might  have 
more  business  than  he  could  attend  to,  while  another  would 
not  be  operating  to  capacity.  All  these  cars  were  now  pooled 
and  operated  as  a  common  stock  under  the  direction  of  the 
car-service  section. 

Another  reform  of  federal  operation  was  the  adoption  of 
the  so-called  "sailing-day  plan"  for  handling  less-than-carload 
freight.  Why  this  measure  was  called  the  sailing-day  plan  is 
an  inscrutable  mystery,  for  it  certainly  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  sailing  of  ships.  Less-than-carload  freight  is  profitable  to 
a  railroad  because  of  the  heavy  tariffs  charged  for  its  trans- 
portation. Every  railroad  attempted  to  make  its  line  attractive 
to  the  occasional  small  shipper.  This  it  did  by  operating  daily 
out  of  each  important  center  at  least  one  freight  car  for  the 
reception  of  less-than-carload  shipments.  Such  shipments  in 
the  aggregate  seldom  loaded  the  cars  full;  oftener  the  l.c.l.  car 
traveled  half  empty.  The  Railroad  Administration's  sailing- 
day  plan  can  best  be  described  by  the  illustration  of  what 
occurred  at  such  a  city  as  Chicago.  Each  principal  railroad 
operating  between  Chicago  and  New  York  sent  eastward  daily 
a  car  for  l.c.l.  shipments.  The  Railroad  Administration  con- 


144  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

solidated  this  effort.  All  l.c.l.  freight  was  shipped  each  day 
by  a  single  railroad.  On  Monday,  say,  the  New  York  Central 
would  handle  the  cars,  on  Tuesday  they  would  go  via  the 
Pennsylvania,  on  Wednesday  by  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio,  and 
so  on,  so  that  each  road  received  its  share  of  the  haulage.  This 
consolidation  enabled  the  cars  to  be  loaded  full,  and  thus 
released  all  the  excess  equipment  formerly  required.  This  item 
may  seem  insignificant;  but  it  is  estimated  that  the  sailing- 
day  plan,  in  full  force  throughout  the  United  States,  is  capable 
of  saving  the  daily  handling  of  thirty  tons  of  freight  at  each 
of  400  points.  During  the  war  period  the  plan  was  adopted 
only  between  the  principal  eastern  terminals. 

The  Railroad  Administration  also  did  for  the  entire  gov- 
ernment traffic  what  the  car-tracing  bureau  of  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  performed  for  war  department  freight:  it  kept 
track  of  the  movement  of  cars  and  traced  lost  cars  for  all  the 
various  war  agencies.  This  service  was  rendered  by  the  car- 
service  section,  which  in  the  first  year  of  operation  recorded 
the  movements  of  an  average  of  2,700  cars  daily,  or  over 
1,000,000  in  the  entire  year,  a  work  requiring  an  organization 
of  nearly  150  employees.  It  traced  down  and  located  about 
16,000  lost  cars  loaded  with  government  freight. 

To  the  War  Department  itself,  the  car-service  section  ren- 
dered the  special  service  of  maintaining  a  steady  supply 
of  freight  car  equipment  to  the  camps  and  other  military  estab- 
lishments. Up  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  the  Railroad 
Administration  moved  to  the  camps,  aviation  fields,  and  other 
army  centers  over  400,000  cars  loaded  with  construction  mate- 
rials, supplies  for  men  and  animals,  and  other  commodities 
necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  these  plants. 

The  successful  prosecution  of  such  a  war  as  ours  against 
Germany  required  the  complete  coordination  of  all  the  re- 
sources of  the  country.  One  government  service  might  pro- 
claim in  its  propaganda,  "Food  will  win  the  war  I"  Another 
might  blazon  the  motto,  "Coal  will  win  the  war  I"  or  "Ships 
will  win  the  war!"  As  a  fact,  no  one  of  these  elements  could 
win  the  war  single-handed;  it  could  only  do  its  vital  and 


SOLVING  NATIONAL  FREIGHT  PROBLEM    145 

indispensable  share.  When  Marshal  Joffre  declared  that  the 
railroads  of  France  won  the  battle  of  the  Mame,  he  spoke 
with  pardonable  rhetorical  exaggeration.  The  French  railroads 
could  not  have  won  the  battle  unless  there  had  been  trained 
troops  for  them  to  transport  and  food  for  those  troops  to  eat 
and  ammunition  for  their  guns.  The  railroads  of  the  United 
States  could  not  win  the  war;  but,  like  any  other  indispensable 
agency,  they  could  easily  enough  lose  it  by  failing.  The  rail- 
roads came  the  nearest  to  failure,  and  hence  their  rescue  by 
the  Government  was  the  most  dramatic  episode.  That  rescue 
made  possible  an  efficient  supply  system  within  the  Army.  But 
all  the  War  Department's  traffic  rules  could  scarcely  have 
brought  about  improvement  if  general  freight  had  remained 
out  of  hand  and  uncontrolled.  For  this  reason,  the  war  service 
of  the  United  States  Railroad  Administration  is  one  of  those 
triumphant  achievements  which  can  scarcely  be  overestimated. 


CHAPTER  XII 
SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP 

NATIONAL  efficiency  in  war  is  to  no  little  extent  a 
matter  of  cutting  out  the  wastes  and  reforming  the 
loose  practices  that  spring  up  in  normal  times,  when 
industry  tends  to  more  or  less  slipshod  practices.  The  United 
Kingdom  impressed  this  fact  upon  its  people  with  its  "doctrine 
of  goods  and  services,"  an  English  household  phrase  during 
the  war.  Waste,  of  either  materials  or  effort,  however  small 
may  be  the  individual  item,  subtracts  just  so  much  from  the 
national  efficiency;  and  the  sum  of  all  of  the  wastes  in  a  coun- 
try the  size  of  ours  is  far  beyond  what  most  persons  would 
suppose.  The  mill  hand  found  it  hard  to  realize  that  a  leaky 
steampipe  endangered  the  country's  safety,  however  slightly, 
when  his  country  was  under  an  extreme  necessity  to  make  the 
most  efficient  use  of  all  its  resources.  No  doubt  it  was  difficult 
for  a  boy  in  war  time  to  understand  that  for  him  to  buy  a 
pair  of  skates  which  he  did  not  need  weakened  his  country  in 
its  stand  against  the  enemy.  The  sequence  was  complex;  it 
went  back  to  ultimate  resources,  ores  and  coal  and  human 
toil,  all  locked  up  in  the  toy  which  his  dollar  purchased,  but 
which  ought  to  have  been  embodied  in  a  cannon  or  in  shell  or 
some  other  material  of  war.  "For  want  of  the  nail,  the  shoe 
was  lost;  for  want  of  the  shoe,  the  horse  was  lost" — the  old 
saw  is  precisely  expressive  of  national  efficiency  in  war.  A 
military  defeat  might  well  be  chargeable  to  the  carelessness  of 
the  conquered  people  about  stopping  up  the  little  wastes.  This 
was  a  lesson  which  the  American  people  would  have  had  to 
leam  thoroughly,  had  the  war  been  greatly  prolonged. 

In  rail  and  water  transportation,  there  was  an  invisible 
waste  which  bore  directly  upon  the  efficiency  of  our  freight- 
ing. Until  the  Government  had  called  certain  scientists  into 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  147 

its  war  organization  to  analyze  the  subject,  it  is  doubtful  if 
many  in  the  United  States  realized  how  profligate  the  nation 
had  become  in  the  use  of  its  transportation  facilities.  Now  and 
again  our  practices  came  up  for  comparison  with  the  methods 
of  the  more  prudent  peoples  of  Europe — for  example,  in  for- 
eign trade,  where  our  goods  met  those  of  Europe  in  competi- 
tion— and  then  we  heard  a  great  deal  that  was  not  compli- 
mentary to  ourselves,  about,  for  instance,  the  packing  of  goods. 
Yet,  even  then,  we  did  not  realize  that  we  were  just  as  care- 
less and  unscientific  about  the  packing  of  goods  in  domestic 
commerce.  It  is  not  too  sweeping  to  assert  that  one  of  the 
great  incidental  war  benefits  to  the  United  States  will  be  the 
lessons  learned  while  circumstances  were  forcing  us  for  the 
first  time  to  apply  science  to  the  packing  and  stowing  of  goods 
in  transportation. 

Astonishing  revelations  were  made  by  the  experts  who  grap- 
pled with  waste  in  shipping.  Probably  normal  industry  in  the 
United  States  pays  $1,500,000  every  day  in  goods  lost  or 
damaged  because  of  improper  packing  and  in  car  space  wasted 
by  uneconomic  use.  In  war,  this  annual  half  billion,  which  is 
what  it  totals,  represented  a  tremendous  impairment  of  the 
nation's  power.  To  correct  the  evil,  the  War  Administration 
early  built  up  an  organization  which,  though  unostentatious, 
worked  with  far-reaching  efficacy.  The  standardization  branch 
of  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  so  demon- 
strated its  usefulness  to  military  traffic  that  it  has  now  become 
a  permanent  part  of  the  War  Department. 

The  benefits  arising  from  the  elimination  of  waste  in  trans- 
portation were  direct  and  immediately  effective.  Employed  in 
the  old-fashioned  way,  the  equipment  of  2,500,000  freight 
cars  in  the  United  States  was  none  too  large  for  the  war  traffic; 
and  indeed  it  was  not  until  the  Government  itself  operated  this 
equipment  as  a  whole,  under  management  skilled  in  the  ex- 
treme, that  American  rolling  stock  became  sufficient  to  the 
needs  of  the  country.  But  when — as  actually  occurred  at  one 
interior  depot  after  we  had  begun  to  learn  something  about  the 
efficient  use  of  shipping  space — our  experts  repacked  into  fif- 


148  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

teen  freight  cars  some  war  department  property  which  had 
filled  fifty,  the  nation  was  using  economy  which,  applied  to  all 
inland  commerce,  would  forthwith  treble  or  quadruple  our 
railroad  equipment,  without  affecting  the  actual  work  of  oper- 
ating the  trains.  One  can  scarcely  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
such  economy  in  rail  transportation. 

When  a  like  efficiency  in  packing  and  stowage  was  applied 
to  ocean  freighting,  the  benefits  were  even  more  startling. 
Men  who  had  grown  gray  in  export  shipping  were  surprised 
by  the  inefficiency  which  they  detected  when  they  had  begun 
to  study  packing  as  a  science.  In  the  supply  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
across  the  sea,  the  scientific  hoarding  of  space  by  the  War 
Department  resulted,  by  a  conservative  estimate,  in  the  saving 
of  at  least  1,000,000  cargo-tons.  It  requires  roughly  1,500,000 
deadweight  tons  of  shipping  to  float  such  a  burden.  The  Ger- 
mans succeeded,  in  their  two  most  triumphant  months  of  un- 
restricted submarine  warfare,  in  sinking  just  about  this  quan- 
tity of  world  deadweight  tonnage.  In  effect,  then,  the  brains 
and  science  of  those  on  our  docks  and  piers  and  in  our  terminal 
bases  lifted  that  enormous  tonnage  from  the  ooze  of  the  ocean 
floor  and  presented  it  to  the  United  States,  loaded  with 
A.  E.  F.  supplies,  for  one  final  trip  across  the  ocean. 

While  the  War  Department  was  reducing  the  subject  of 
packing  to  an  exact  science,  the  Railroad  Administration  was 
applying  to  all  inland  commerce  a  greater  efficiency  in  loading 
cars  than  the  country  had  ever  known  before.  Intensive  car- 
loading  became  the  care  of  the  car-service  section  of  the  United 
States  Railroad  Administration,  whose  work  in  this  quarter 
decisively  helped  to  ease  traffic  conditions  in  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1918.  The  section  had  no  leverage  upon  the  com- 
mercial shipper,  except  persuasion;  but  the  directions  and 
recommendations  for  loading  which  issued  from  its  office  in 
Washington  were  generously  received  by  industry.  Records 
kept  during  the  first  nine  months  of  1918  show  that  the  aver- 
age freight  car  which  moved  in  the  United  States  in  that 
period  bore  a  cargo  4,200  pounds  heavier  than  its  lading  in 
1917. 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  149 

The  reform  was  accomplished  not  merely  by  the  physical 
effort  of  loading  cars  more  heavily,  but  also  by  changing  the 
sizes  of  packages,  the  manner  of  constructing  them,  and  the 
methods  of  packing  articles  within  them.  Tobacco,  for  instance, 
had.  been  shipped  in  hogsheads  too  tall  to  be  packed  in  double 
tiers  inside  a  box  car.  A  car  loaded  with  tobacco  in  the  old 
way  contained  a  large  empty  space  between  the  top  of  the 
layer  of  hogsheads  and  the  roof  of  the  car.  On  the  suggestion 
of  the  Railroad  Administration,  the  shippers  adopted  a  shorter 
hogshead,  and  then  it  became  possible  to  pack  cars  to  the  roof. 
The  manufacturers  had  been  shipping  such  things  as  scythes 
and  grain  cradles  with  the  awkward  crooked  handles  fastened 
at  right  angles  to  the  blades.  These  and  other  agricultural 
implements  they  took  apart  and  did  up  in  compact  bundles. 
The  factories  removed  the  handles  from  baby  carriages  and 
packed  them  in  with  the  carriage  bodies.  They  knocked  down 
and  compactly  crated  wagons,  wheelbarrows,  and  other  vehi- 
cles customarily  shipped  on  their  wheels.  It  had  been  railroad 
practice  to  ship  such  barreled  goods  as  molasses,  oils,  and  tan- 
ning extracts  in  single  tiers  within  cars,  because  a  heavy  upper 
tier  might  crush  the  barrels  underneath.  Care  in  packing  off- 
set this  danger  by  means  of  protecting  layers  of  dunnage  be- 
tween the  upper  tier  of  barrels  and  the  lower.  These  are  but 
a  few  of  scores  of  instances  of  the  reform  in  car-loading. 

Major  General  Goethals,  builder  of  the  Panama  Canal,  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  success  of  army  packing.  Having 
been  associated  with  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation,  he 
understood  at  first  hand  the  crisis  in  ocean  tonnage  and  the 
necessity  of  utilizing  to  its  utmost  capacity  every  cubic  foot 
of  cargo  space  afloat.  When  he  became  Acting  Quartermaster 
General,  he  learned  something  about  the  army  packing  meth- 
ods then  in  vogue — methods  inherited  from  the  easy-going 
past,  when  shipping  space  seemed  to  be  almost  as  limitless  as 
the  air.  One  of  General  Goethals's  first  acts  when,  as  director 
of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic,  he  became  responsible  for  all 
military  transportation  on  land  and  sea,  was  to  call  distin- 
guished engineers  and  other  experts  into  the  Army  and  form 


150  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

them  into  a  group  which  became  eventually  the  engineering 
and  standardization  branch  of  P.  S.  &  T.  When  these  experts 
began  their  study,  they  soon  found  that  commercial  packing 
practice  was  wasteful  of  space,  uneconomical  in  the  use  of 
packing  materials,  such  as  lumber  and  burlap,  and  disregard- 
ful  of  the  hazards  incident  to  transportation — particularly 
transportation  by  sea,  where  the  handling  of  freight  is  much 
rougher  than  in  ordinary  rail  transportation.  Supplies  were 
arriving  in  France  for  the  A.  E.  F.  with  packages  broken,  con- 
tents lost  or  damaged  by  exposure  to  sea  water  or  the  weather, 
and  addresses  or  other  markings  obliterated.  One  of  the  early 
accomplishments  of  the  experts  was  a  system  of  standard 
markings,  so  waterproofed  and  otherwise  applied  that  direc- 
tions for  the  delivery  of  supplies  overseas  could  not  be  lost, 
and  so  plain  that  they  could  not  be  misread.  This  change 
almost  immediately  resulted  in  a  notable  improvement  in  the 
handling  of  supplies  at  the  ocean  gateways  to  France. 

It  is  eminently  worth  the  reader's  while,  if  only  on  the  score 
of  interest,  to  examine  certain  of  the  specific  economies  of 
space  achieved  by  Major  General  Goethals's  experts.  Begin, 
prosaically,  with  hay.  The  A.  E.  F.'s  requirement  of  hay 
amounted  to  almost  a  million  tons  a  year.  The  commercial  bale 
of  hay,  the  only  sort  of  bale  that  our  Army  had  known  before 
1917,  was  of  such  density  that  a  ton  of  hay  occupied  about 
220  cubic  feet.  When  our  first  horses  and  mules  were  shipped 
to  France,  the  Quartermaster  Service  sent  after  them  hay  in 
bales  of  the  commercial  type.  Packing  experts,  examining  this 
problem  among  the  first  matters  taken  up,  decided  that  it  was 
possible  to  compress  hay  much  more  tightly  than  was  done  in 
commercial  baling.  Special  baling  compresses  were  built  and 
installed  at  army  supply  depots;  and  soon  we  were  squeezing 
our  overseas  hay  down  to  about  eighty  cubic  feet  a  ton.  So 
compressed,  the  hay  not  only  arrived  in  better  condition — for 
the  new  bales  were  so  tight  that  they  were  practically  impervi- 
ous to  water — but  the  space  required  on  railroad  cars  and  in 
the  holds  of  vessels  for  a  given  amount  of  hay  was  cut  down 
nearly  two-thirds.  One  hay  ship  packed  in  the  new  way  could 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  151 

do  the  work  of  three  packed  in  the  old.  With  so  tremendous 
an  economy  for  a  beginning,  the  packing  service  was  at  once 
enabled  to  extend  its  function  in  many  other  directions. 

The  shipment  of  machinery  offered  greater  difficulty  to  the 
space-savers;  yet  remarkable  economies  followed  their  inves- 
tigation. Each  type  of  machinery  presented  a  special  problem, 
any  solution  of  which  the  experts  had  to  test  by  several 
criteria — ease  of  assembling  when  the  shipment  reached 
France ;  the  possibility  of  breakage ;  the  size  of  crates  or  boxes 
in  relation  to  ease  in  handling.  Motor  trucks  and  camions,  for 
instance,  had  at  first  been  shipped  abroad  on  their  wheels, 
lashed  to  the  decks  or  in  the  holds  of  cargo  vessels.  It  was 
impossible  so  to  pack  these  vehicles  as  to  prevent  their  move- 
ment in  a  rolling  ship;  and  many  of  them  suffered  considerable 
damage  in  transportation,  not  to  speak  of  the  loss  of  cargo 
space.  At  the  beginning  it  had  really  been  necessary  to  ship 
only  assembled  trucks,  because  of  the  lack  of  assembling  facili- 
ties on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  But  soon  the  necessary 
assembling  plants  had  been  set  up  in  France;  and  then  the 
Army  established  shops  for  the  proper  crating  of  motor  vehi- 
cles here,  under  directions  laid  down  by  the  packing  experts. 
Chief  among  the  crating  establishments  was  the  Motor  Trans- 
port Corps'  Camp  Holabird,  near  Baltimore,  Maryland. 

The  scientific  crating  of  standard  trucks  and  automobiles 
proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  effective  space-savers  in  the  over- 
seas supply  system.  A  truck  which,  on  its  wheels,  occupied 
1,500  cubic  feet  could  be  so  condensed  that  the  crates  and 
boxes  fitted  into  a  space  of  300  cubic  feet — one-fifth  of  the 
space  occupied  by  the  assembled  truck.  Special  crating  com- 
panies and  regiments,  trained  at  Camp  Holabird,  became  so 
expert  that  trucks  moved  into  the  camp  in  a  steady  stream 
and  flowed  out  of  it  to  the  cargo  piers  in  a  corresponding 
stream  of  packed  crates  and  boxes.  Camp  Holabird,  when 
working  at  capacity,  could  crate  two  miles  of  trucks  in  a 
single  day.  Moreover,  the  crated  trucks,  protected  from  the 
blows  and  strains  of  movement  within  the  holds  of  vessels, 
and  also  from  the  rust  of  accidental  wettings  or  ocean  mois- 


152  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ture — for  the  crates  were  moisture-proof — reached  France  in 
better  condition  than  those  shipped  on  their  wheels. 

The  crating  of  guns  of  the  mobile  artillery,  each  weapon  a 
special  problem  in  itself,  also  brought  about  large  savings  in 
space. 

The  experts  applied  themselves  to  the  more  compact  baling 
of  cotton.  An  immense  tonnage  of  this  commodity  had  to  be 
shipped  to  the  European  Allies,  and  every  foot  of  vessel  space 
saved  could  be  utilized  for  the  shipment  of  other  essential  war 
supplies.  By  means  of  slight  modifications  of  the  cotton  com- 
pressors in  use,  it  was  found  possible,  without  injuring  the 
fiber,  to  reduce  the  cotton  bales  one-third  in  bulk. 

Again  and  again  the  experts  studied  special  shipments  and, 
by  ingenuity  in  packing,  presented  fresh  tonnage  space  to  the 
Government.  They  designed  an  improved  crating  system  for 
a  consignment  of  2,000  horse-drawn  ambulances,  thereby 
saving  a  total  of  300,000  cubic  feet,  or  about  the  cargo  capac- 
ity of  a  5,000-ton  ship.  They  improved  the  crating  of  a  con- 
signment of  6,500  water  carts,  saving  279,000  cubic  feet  of 
space — a  free  gift  to  Uncle  Sam  of  another  ship  for  a  voyage 
across  the  ocean.  Airplanes  required  a  protracted  study,  but 
the  study  cut  in  two  the  space  previously  allotted;  in  other 
words,  after  the  recommendations  of  the  standardization 
branch  had  been  adopted,  one  ship  could  carry  twice  as  many 
airplanes  as  it  could  early  in  the  war.  There  had  been  great 
waste  of  space  in  the  shipment  of  camp  equipment.  Camp 
stoves  of  the  old  type  would  not  pack  handily;  it  was  neces- 
sary, in  crating,  to  knock  them  down  and  nest  together  their 
three  conical  sections.  A  new  stove  was  designed.  It  dis- 
mounted into  three  pieces  which,  packed  flat,  occupied  less 
than  one-sixth  as  much  shipping  space  as  the  older  stove. 
There  were  thousands  of  these  stoves  and  literally  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  other  articles  of  camp  equipment;  and  the 
general  average  of  space-saving  in  shipment  of  them,  after  the 
new  packing  regulations  were  in  force,  was  nearly  forty  per 
cent. 

Another  way  in  which  the  War  Department  saved  space  in 


Photo   by   Forest   Products   Liihcriitory 

TESTING  DRUM  AT  FOREST  PRODUCTS  LABORATORY 


Photo   by   Forest   Products   Laboratory 

IMPROVED  BOX  (FOR  TRENCH-MORTAR 

SHELL)  UNHARMED  BY  TUMBLING 

TEST;  ORIGINAL-DESIGN 

BOX  BROKEN 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  153 

freight  cars  and  ships  was  by  changing  methods  of  manufac- 
ture. Nearly  everj^one  has  heard  of  the  dehydration  and  evap- 
oration of  fruits  and  vegetables  which  was  carried  on  during 
the  war.  This  practice  enabled  the  supply  service  to  ship  addi- 
tional millions  of  pounds  of  food  to  the  soldiers  abroad  in 
the  vessel  space  available.  Soap  was  dried  for  lighter  weight 
and  smaller  volume.  The  reclamation  of  worn  uniforms,  both 
at  home  and  abroad,  was  important  in  that  it  saved  the  space 
that  would  have  been  required  in  shipping  new  garments  if 
the  old  ones  had  not  been  saved.  Beef  was  boned  for  more  com- 
pact shipment;  and  the  adoption  of  the  so-called  shankless 
beef,  with  the  hind  quarter  disjointed  and  folded  in  against 
the  carcass,  amounted  to  the  addition  of  thousands  of  cubic 
tons  of  refrigeration  space  to  our  rail  and  water  shipping 
equipment.  Soluble  coffee  cut  down  the  bulk  of  coffee  ship- 
ments by  eliminating  all  but  the  potable  elements  of  the  bean ; 
and  the  practice  of  roasting  the  green  coffee  beans  at  camps 
and  stations,  both  in  this  country  and  abroad,  made  it  possible 
to  send  coffee  in  bulk,  so  that  it  could  be  stowed  compactly, 
instead  of  in  cans,  which  had  to  be  boxed. 

The  huge  amount  of  space  required  by  the  containers  of 
tinned  food  was,  in  fact,  a  constant  concern  to  the  space- 
saving  experts.  Notable  reforms  were  under  way  when  the 
armistice  called  a  halt.  Already,  however,  we  had  abandoned 
canned  pork  and  beans — three-quarters  of  the  shipping  weight 
of  which  is  water,  tin,  and  wooden  boxes — in  favor  of  dry 
beans  in  bulk  for  baking  in  France.  This  plan  increased  the 
bean  supply  three  times  with  the  same  transportation  space. 
Had  the  war  continued  another  year,  it  would  have  seen  in 
France  a  great  army  cannery,  which  would  have  received  from 
the  United  States  the  raw  materials  of  sheet  tin  and  perishable 
food  products  in  bulk,  to  the  enormous  saving  of  space  aboard 
cars  and  ships. 

In  addition  to  these  and  dozens  of  other  economies,  the 
efficiency  engineering  of  the  War  Department  brought  about 
great  reforms  in  the  standardization  of  supplies — changes 
which  had  the  incidental  effect  of  saving  ship  space.  At  the 


154  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

outset  of  the  war  the  Army  was  using  seventy-seven  different 
kinds  of  tool  chests.  The  standardization  branch  reduced  these 
to  seven,  which  were  not  only  sufficient  for  all  field  needs,  but 
also  much  more  compact.  Some  of  the  new  chests  were  but 
half  the  size  of  those  they  supplanted.  On  a  ship  that  could 
hold  17,000  chests  of  the  old  type,  it  was  possible  to  load 
82,000  of  the  new.  In  one  month  of  1918  the  A.  E.  F.  requi- 
sitioned 30,000  tool  chests.  The  saving  of  ocean  freight 
charges,  had  this  requisition  been  filled  with  chests  of  the  new 
type,  would  have  exceeded  $1,000,000. 

Electrical  equipment,  too,  was  standardized.  The  A.  E.  F. 
required  prodigious  quantities  of  electrical  supplies.  Before 
standardization  became  a  fact,  supply  officers  in  France  had 
to  cable  lengthy  descriptions  and  specifications  of  each  article 
required.  Standardization,  by  giving  every  article  a  catalogue 
number,  took  an  immense  burden  from  the  Atlantic  cables 
and  also  eliminated  errors  in  cable  transmission.  When  all 
the  electrical  equipment  needed  by  the  Army  had  been 
standardized,  it  was  discovered  that  the  officers  had  virtually 
standardized  the  entire  electrical  equipment  of  the  United 
States — an  achievement  which  would  have  been  deemed  an 
impossibility  in  time  of  peace.  Standardization  extended  also 
to  all  other  army  supplies.  If  we  were  to  undertake  another 
overseas  war,  our  expeditionary  forces  would  cable  for  their 
supplies  almost  entirely  by  catalogue  numbers. 

The  Forest  Products  Laboratory,  Madison,  Wisconsin,  an 
agency  of  the  United  States  Forest  Service  at  the  University 
of  Wisconsin,  became  an  invaluable  ally  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment in  its  freight-packing  activities.  This  institution  was 
established  by  federal  funds  nine  or  ten  years  ago  for  the 
scientific  study  of  wood  in  its  relation  to  American  industry. 
The  laboratory  was  of  primary  value  to  the  Government  in 
its  study  of  wood  problems  connected  with  the  manufacture 
of  airplanes;  but  it  rendered  another  important  service  by  its 
expert  advice  on  wooden  packages  and  wooden  containers  of 
all  sorts.  Crating  and  packing  had  been  a  subject  of  research 
at  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  from  the  date  of  its  estab- 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  155 

lishment.  When  the  war  came,  the  institution  was  prepared 
to  take  the  lead  in  this  new  industrial  science.  In  addition  to 
using  its  test  rooms  and  its  experts  in  the  solution  of  individ- 
ual problems,  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  set  up  on  the 
university  campus  a  training  school  to  which  the  various  pro- 
duction bureaus  of  the  Army  sent  officers  and  men  to  be  taught 
the  best  methods  in  packing.  Some  400  soldiers  attended  this 
school  during  the  war  period.  Much  of  the  saving  in  military 
shipping  space  was  due  to  investigations  conducted  at  Madison. 

The  experts  of  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  studied  the 
packing  of  an  army  article  for  overseas  shipment  with  three 
considerations  in  mind.  Foremost  was  the  consideration  of 
strength;  for,  above  all,  supplies  had  to  reach  the  A.  E.  F.  in 
good  condition.  The  second  consideration  was  space.  Every 
effort  was  made  to  design  a  crate  or  box  of  minimum  size; 
and  in  this  connection  the  experts  worked  out  systems  of  pack- 
ing and  compressing  supplies  within  the  boxes.  On  one  occa- 
sion an  instructor  at  the  laboratory  brought  before  a  class  of 
ordnance  officers  a  new  box  packed  with  entrenching  tools. 
He  allowed  the  students  to  examine  the  scheme  of  packing 
as  closely  as  they  wished.  Then  he  dumped  the  contents  upon 
the  floor  and  told  the  students  to  pack  them  again  into  the 
box.  After  an  hour  of  concerted  effort  had  failed  to  get  the 
tools  back  in,  the  instructor  showed  the  class  the  system  upon 
which  his  results  depended;  and  thereafter  the  students  them- 
selves were  able  to  duplicate  his  performance  in  a  few  min- 
utes. The  third  consideration  in  army  packages  was  cost. 
Scarcely  a  packing  problem  brought  to  the  Forest  Products 
Laboratory  during  the  war  missed  being  solved  there  with  a 
stronger  package,  a  smaller  package,  and  a  package  less  costly 
in  money  and  materials. 

The  laboratory  at  Madison  is  fitted  out  with  special  testing 
machinery  for  subjecting  packages  to  the  sort  of  treatment 
which  they  undergo  in  transportation — particularly  in  ocean 
transportation,  where  boats  must  often  unload  in  rough  water, 
the  cranes  dropping  their  cargo  nets  heavily  into  tossing  light- 
ers. One  of  these  machines,  a  great  hexagonal  wheel  fourteen 


156  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

feet  in  diameter,  with  a  rim  eight  feet  wide,  is  called  a  testing 
drum.  The  interior  of  the  rim  is  divided  into  eight  compart- 
ments, each  seven  feet  wide,  with  sides  several  inches  high. 
The  package  to  be  tested  for  strength  is  placed  in  one  of  these 
compartments.  The  wheel,  which  revolves  on  a  horizontal  axis 
at  the  rate  of  one  revolution  a  minute  and  is  capable  of  sus- 
taining the  fall  of  a  package  weighing  1,000  pounds,  carries 
the  package  upward.  Near  the  top  the  package  slides  over  the 
edge  of  the  compartment  and  falls  ten  or  twelve  feet  to  the 
bottom,  only  to  be  borne  aloft  again  for  another  fall.  This 
process  is  continued  until  the  package  breaks,  or  "fails."  The 
laboratory  has  also  a  smaller  drum,  seven  feet  in  diameter, 
suitable  for  testing  boxes  up  to  200  pounds.  The  practical 
value  of  the  falling  test  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  container, 
loaded  as  it  would  be  in  commerce,  is  subjected  to  exactly 
such  hard  knocks  and  drops  as  it  might  receive  during  ship- 
ment. Another  machine  at  the  laboratory  tests  boxes  by  com- 
pression upon  the  comers  or  edges ;  and  a  fourth  drops  wooden 
containers  comerwise  upon  an  iron  floor  to  determine  their 
resistance  to  such  shocks. 

The  investigators  at  Madison  have  discovered  that  for  many 
years  American  packing  practice  has  been  going  down  hill. 
The  boxes  and  crates  once  in  common  use  were  much  stouter 
than  those  of  to-day.  With  competition  keen  in  the  box  indus- 
try, the  addition  of  even  a  single  nail  in  a  manufacturing 
process  may  put  a  box  factory  out  of  business.  Competition 
has  resulted  in  cheapening  the  quality  of  packages.  Now,  even 
one  or  two  side-edge  nails  will  make  an  astonishing  difference 
in  the  strength  of  a  box.  Take  for  illustration  a  canned-food 
box,  21  inches  by  10  inches  by  12  inches,  a  standard  size.  For 
the  best  results,  this  box  should  have  ten  nails  along  the  21- 
inch  edge;  seven  nails  in  the  edge  is  good-quality  practice. 
Three  or  four  nails — the  common  number — are  little  better 
than  none.  If  the  ends  of  this  box  are  of  seven-eighths-inch 
material  and  the  sides  of  half-inch  material  (the  common  prac- 
tice), and  you  load  the  box  with  filled  cans  and  drop  it  six 
inches,   that  single   fall   will  likely  knock  out  the   sides  if 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  157 

only  three  or  four  side-edge  nails  are  used.  It  should  stand  a 
drop  of  four  feet  without  injury.  Put  in  five  nails,  and  the 
box  will  stand  twenty  drops  in  the  small  revolving  drum;  put 
in  seven,  and  it  will  stand  a  hundred  falls,  or  five  times  as 
many.  The  reason  for  this  increased  efficiency  is  that  five  nails 
are  not  enough  to  transmit  the  elasticity  of  the  wood  in  one 
side  of  the  box  to  that  in  the  other,  whereas  two  more  nails 
make  a  rigid  connection  that  throws  the  entire  spring  into 
the  wood,  which  then  absorbs  the  shock.  Every  box  car  run- 
ning at  freight  train  speed  has  a  weaving  motion  to  and  fro. 
If  boxes  are  insufficiently  nailed,  the  elasticity  of  the  wood  is 
not  transmitted  through  the  nail  joints,  and,  as  the  packers 
put  it,  the  nails  simply  "walk  out"  of  the  boxes.  The  addition 
of  even  one  nail  will  sometimes  prevent  this  mishap  and  bring 
a  box  through  to  its  destination  in  good  order. 

As  the  result  of  the  decreased  quality  of  wooden  boxes, 
boxes  of  fiber  and  corrugated  pasteboard  have  been  able  to 
dispute  the  packing  field,  although  these  are  inferior  to  good 
wooden  boxes.  But,  having  once  opened  the  door  to  the  com- 
petition of  these  materials,  the  wooden-box  makers  are  now 
confronted  with  the  impossibility  of  improving  the  quality 
of  their  product — a  curious  business  situation.  To  improve 
quality  means  to  increase  expenses  at  the  box  factory,  and 
hence  to  increase  prices.  Fiber  boxes  are  now  the  product  of  a 
considerable  industry,  which  is  strong  enough  to  usurp  the 
field  if  the  wooden-box  makers  greatly  increase  their  prices. 
But  the  fiber  or  corrugated  pasteboard  box  never  would  have 
arisen  as  a  serious  competitor  to  the  wooden  box,  if  the  quality 
of  wooden  boxes  had  always  been  maintained. 

When,  at  the  outbreak  of  war,  the  Ordnance  Bureau  faced 
the  necessity  of  shipping  heavy  supplies  to  France,  its  offi- 
cers proceeded  to  draw  specifications  for  crates,  boxes,  and 
other  packing  cases.  These  men  knew  the  characteristics  of 
metal,  but  not  those  of  wood;  and  as  a  rule  they  specified 
heavier  lumber  than  was  necessary.  They  prescribed  dimen- 
sions not  standard  in  the  box  industry,  and  in  numerous  other 
respects   departed    from   common   practice.    Sometimes    they 


158  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

specified  extra  strength  in  places  where  the  stress  would  not 
be  heaviest.  Not  only  were  the  boxes  which  they  requisitioned 
less  efficient,  as  a  rule,  than  standard  boxes,  but  it  was  almost 
impossible  to  obtain  any  bids  for  the  manufacture  of  boxes 
under  their  specifications.  When  the  box  industry  failed  to 
bid  for  the  contracts,  the  Ordnance  Bureau  appealed  to  the 
box  experts  of  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory.  These  men 
went  to  Washington  and  revised  the  specifications  to  conform 
to  ordinary  commercial  practice ;  and  thereafter  the  Army  had 
no  trouble  in  securing  bids. 

It  seems  to  be  the  opinion  in  to-day's  industry  that  strength 
can  not  be  secured  in  a  wooden  box  without  the  use  of  cleated 
ends.  For  years  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  has  advo- 
cated the  so-called  "three-way  end,"  which  is  one  of  the 
oldest  types  of  box-end  construction.  In  late  years  three-way- 
end  construction  has  been  largely  discarded  in  favor  of  dove- 
tailed ends  or  cleated  ends.  An  illustration  facing  page  152 
shows  the  principle  of  the  three-way  end.  In  a  three-way 
corner,  each  member  is  nailed  in  two  directions,  so  that  no 
one  board  can  be  removed  unless  the  nails  are  first  drawn  from 
one  side;  otherwise,  the  board  will  split  or  break.  Each  piece 
holds  the  points  of  two  nails  in  the  grain  side  of  the  wood 
(nails  so  driven  hold  much  better  than  those  driven  into  the 
end  grain) ;  and  four  nails  are  driven  into  or  through  each 
piece,  but  all  separated  from  each  other. 

The  Forest  Products  Laboratory  used  this  type  of  corner 
construction  in  practically  all  the  crates  and  most  of  the  boxes 
designed  for  the  War  Department.  It  is  as  strong  as  cleating, 
and  much  more  economical  of  space.  The  advantage  of  the 
three-way-end  box  over  the  cleated  box  in  space  economy  may 
be  seen  by  taking,  for  example,  a  cubical  box  of  half -inch 
material  seven  inches  long,  interior  measurement.  Such  a  box 
when  cleated  is  nine  inches  long.  With  three-way  ends,  it  is 
eight  inches  long.  The  cleated  box  occupies,  then,  twelve  and 
one-half  per  cent  more  space  than  the  three-way-end  box.  In 
boxes  of  average  sizes,  between  six  and  eight  per  cent  of  the 
shipping  space  is  saved  by  three-way  ends.  The  average  box 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  159 

maker  seems  to  regard  cleating  as  easier  in  construction,  al- 
though it  is  not  really  so;  and  in  recent  years  the  cleated  box 
has  almost  supplanted  the  three-way-end  box  in  domestic 
commerce. 

The  Forest  Products  Laboratory  brought  about,  over  and 
above  its  general  reforms,  many  specific  benefits  in  our  mili- 
tary shipping.  It  redesigned  for  the  Ordnance  Department  the 
six-inch  trench-mortar  shell  box,  with  savings  of  thirty-two 
per  cent  in  lumber  and  nearly  twenty  per  cent  in  cargo  space. 
This  incident  is  typical  of  the  work  of  the  Laboratory.  In 
the  shell  box  of  the  original  design,  one  of  the  sides  formed 
the  cover.  To  open  the  box,  it  was  necessary  to  take  out  twelve 
screws.  In  the  laboratory  design,  the  end  became  the  cover; 
and  it  was  held  in  place  by  four  vertical  metal  straps  bent 
down  and  nailed.  All  that  had  to  be  done  to  remove  the  cover 
was  to  cut  these  four  straps  with  a  clipper — an  operation 
quickly  performed,  even  in  the  excitement  of  battle.  One  box 
of  each  sort,  each  with  a  "dud"  shell  inside  it,  was  sub- 
jected to  264  tumbles  in  the  test  drum.  The  laboratory  box 
sustained  this  test  without  injur}%  whereas  the  shell  kicked 
out  one  end  of  the  ordnance  box. 

In  all  these  stability  tests,  boxes  were  packed,  whenever 
possible,  with  the  contents  actually  to  be  shipped  in  them. 
Shells  and  grenades  were  shipped  to  Madison  for  these  tests. 
In  boxes  designed  to  carry  high  explosives,  sand  or  some  other 
similar  substitute,  in  weight  equal  to  the  powder,  was  used. 
Even  articles  so  delicate  as  electric  lamp  globes  were  used  in 
the  tumbling  tests,  for,  to  be  efficient,  the  package  must  pro- 
tect from  injury  whatever  contents  it  had  to  carry.  The  Labo- 
ratory shattered  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  electric  lamp 
globes  in  developing  improved  types  of  containers  for  export 
shipment. 

The  Laboratory  saved  nine  per  cent  in  cargo  space  by  re- 
designing the  original  box  for  entrenching  shovels.  A  rede- 
signed box  saved  seven  per  cent  of  the  space  occupied  by 
entrenching  picks.  A  redesigned  box  achieved  the  saving  of 


i6o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

thirty-two  per  cent  of  the  space  given  to  entrenching  hand- 
axes. 

The  Ordnance  Bureau  designed  for  rifle  grenades  an  ap- 
parently strong  box  which  failed  to  give  good  service.  The 
Forest  Products  Laboratory  discovered  in  its  tests  that  this 
was  because  the  grenades  were  not  packed  tightly  in  the  inte- 
rior cells,  which  were  made  of  partitions  of  corrugated  board. 
The  experts  reduced  the  size  of  the  cells  so  that  the  grenades 
would  fit  snugly,  incidentally  reducing  the  size  of  the  box ;  and 
the  redesigned  box,  although  otherwise  of  identical  construc- 
tion, sustained  the  tumbling  tests. 

The  Ordnance  Department  designed  cases  for  Browning 
rifles  and  their  accessories,  the  shipping  equipment  consisting 
of  one  box  which  held  two  of  the  automatic  rifles  and  another 
box  for  accessories.  The  Forest  Products  Laboratory  designed 
a  single  box  to  hold  both  the  rifles  and  their  entire  equipment, 
saving  twenty-eight  per  cent  in  material  besides  the  labor 
wasted  in  handling  two  boxes  instead  of  one.  Artillery  lead 
harness  boxes  were  redesigned  to  take  up  less  than  three- 
fourths  of  the  space  which  they  had  occupied.  The  Ordnance 
Department  had  packed  ten  Modified  1917  Enfield  rifles  in  a 
box.  The  Forest  Products  Laboratory  designed  a  box  which 
held  twelve  rifles  instead  of  ten  and  which  saved  thirty-five 
per  cent  in  shipping  room.  There  was  waste  of  space  in  the  box 
originally  designed  to  hold  two  Browning  heavy  machine  guns 
and  their  equipment.  The  Forest  Products  Laborator}^  designed 
a  box  that  was  just  as  good  in  every  way,  and  seventeen  per 
cent  smaller. 

Of  the  Army's  achievements  in  the  saving  of  shipping  space, 
one  of  the  most  spectacular  was  that  in  the  baling  of  clothing 
and  other  textile  supplies  at  the  supply  base  in  Brooklyn.  The 
idea  of  baling  clothing  for  shipment  overseas  was  the  child  of 
Major  David  Abercrombie,  a  name  everywhere  familiar  to 
lovers  of  the  open.  As  the  former  head  of  a  widely  known 
sporting-goods  firm  bearing  his  name.  Major  Abercrombie 
possessed  long  experience  in  the  packing  of  supplies  for  com- 
pactness and  ease  of  transportation;  for  his  concern  specialized 


GRENADE  BOXES  WITH  LOOSE-  (ON  LEFT)  AND 
TIGHT-FITTING  CELLS  AFTER  TEST 


1.  ORDNANCE  DEPARTMENT  BOXES  FOR  TWO  BROWNING 
RIFLES   AND    EQUIPMENT 


Photos  by  Forest  Products  Laboratory 

2.  IMPROVED  SINGLE  BOX  FOR  SAME  MATERIEL 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  161 

in  the  equipment  of  exploring  expeditions,  particularly  those 
into  the  heart  of  Africa,  where  all  the  baggage  and  supplies 
must  be  carried  on  the  backs  of  black  tribesmen.  Major  Aber- 
crombie  came  into  the  army  service  riding  a  single  hobby,  the 
scheme  of  baling  textile  articles  instead  of  putting  them  loosely 
into  packing  cases.  He  continued  to  ride  this  hobby,  thinking 
of  nothing  but  baling  all  day  long  and  dreaming  about  nothing 
else  at  night,  until  the  end  of  his  service.  The  Government 
benefited  exceedingly  by  his  enthusiasm,  for  he  succeeded  in 
effecting  the  adoption  of  baling  as  standard  army  practice — 
a  practice  which,  it  is  estimated,  saved  the  Government  during 
the  war  period  close  to  $100,000,000  in  ocean  freight  charges. 
This  sum  represents  an  enormous  volume  of  ship  space  saved ; 
how  much  it  is  impossible  to  estimate  accurately,  but  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  it  was  by  far  the  largest  element  in  the  total 
shipping  economy. 

When  Major  Abercrombie  was  commissioned  and  assigned 
to  service  at  the  army  base  in  Brooklyn  in  charge  of  the  pack- 
ing of  supplies,  the  Army  was  shipping  its  textiles  in  large 
wooden  cases.  The  quartermaster  case  of  the  specifications  was 
of  white  pine  lumber  and  weighed  from  forty  to  forty-two 
pounds.  By  midsummer  of  1917  there  were  no  white  pine 
cases  to  be  had — they  had  virtually  disappeared  from  the 
trade — and  the  substitute  case,  of  yellow  pine,  weighed  from 
ninety  to  ninety-six  pounds.  Major  Abercrombie  first  pro- 
cured a  test  of  baling.  Its  superiority  over  casing  was  so  clearly 
demonstrated  that  there  was  no  longer  much  question  about 
the  form  in  which  our  textile  supplies  should  go  to  France. 
But  the  commercial  baling  machinery  in  ordinary  use  lacked 
sufficient  power  to  compress  the  bales  according  to  Major 
Abercrombie's  specifications;  and  he  had  to  have  special 
machinery  designed  and  installed  at  the  baling  plant  in 
Brooklyn. 

By  the  spring  of  1918  the  new  balers  were  ready  for  work, 
in  a  wing  set  aside  for  the  purpose  at  the  Bush  terminal  on  the 
Brooklyn  water  front.  The  lingering  remnants  of  prejudice  in 
the  Army  against  the  new  system  had  been  overcome;  and 


l62 


THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 


thereafter  baling,  which  had  been  conducted  in  a  small  way 
with  hand  compressors  since  October,  1917,  rapidly  super- 
seded casing  in  the  shipment  of  our  clothing  and  equipage 
supplies,  whether  for  overseas  or  from  the  Brooklyn  base  to 
interior  points.  In  inland  traffic  the  system  was  extended  first 
over  the  East  and  then  throughout  the  country,  until,  before 
the  treaty  of  peace  was  signed,  the  Army  had  adopted  baling 
in  its  standard  specifications  for  packing  all  textiles,  wherever 
shipped. 

The  list  of  supplies  adaptable  to  baling  is  a  long  one. 
Among  the  better  known  articles  of  army  equipment  which 
crossed  the  ocean  in  bales,  the  following  may  be  named : 


Aprons 

Bags,  surplus  kits 

Mosquito  bars 

Blankets 

Barrack  bags 

Stockings 

Breeches 

Bed  sacks 

Caps,  winter 

Coats 

Bed  sheets 

Leggins 

Drawers 

Toweling 

Cot  covers 

Overalls 

Tentage 

Mops 

Overcoats 

Mattresses 

Pillows 

Shirts 

Mattress  covers 

Pillow  cases  and  sacks 

Trousers 

Mosquito  head  nets 

Caps  and  gloves 

Undershirts 

Shelter  halves 

The  baling  of  supplies  was  worked  out  as  a  science;  a  science 
which  even  possessed  its  own  terminology.  Countless  experi- 
ments determined  the  proper  way  of  folding  each  article  so 
as  to  put  the  greatest  number  in  a  bale.  The  numbers  packed 
in  a  bale  varied  widely,  of  course,  according  to  the  article. 
Only  one  storage  tent  could  be  put  in  a  bale;  201  summer 
undershirts  were  compressible  to  the  same  dimensions.  The 
ideal  package  for  shipment  is  twice  as  long  as  it  is  wide,  and  a 
little  higher  than  its  width.  The  dimensions  adopted  for  the 
army  bale  were  15  inches  by  30  inches  by  14  to  19  inches. 
With  the  welfare  and  efficiency  of  the  stevedores  in  mind, 
army  bales  were  usually  kept  under  100  pounds,  but  above 
80.  Since  women  were  sometimes  employed  as  freight  handlers 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  163 

in  the  supply  service  of  the  A.  E.  F.  in  France,  the  Army  pre- 
ferred lighter  bales  to  heavier  ones.  In  a  bale  of  these  dimen- 
sions, 10  long  winter  overcoats  could  be  compressed,  20 
blankets,  35  olive-drab  uniform  coats,  45  olive-drab  breeches, 
or  82  flannel  shirts.  A  bale  of  overcoats  weighed  96  pounds, 
a  bale  of  blankets  83  pounds,  one  of  uniform  coats  99  pounds, 
one  of  breeches  95  pounds. 

Each  bale  was  wrapped  first  in  waterproof  paper  and  then 
in  burlap.  It  was  hard  at  first  to  get  suitable  wrapping  paper. 
The  paper  must  not  only  be  impervious  to  moisture,  but  it 
must  also  be  expansive  or  elastic  in  texture,  so  as  to  stretch 
without  tearing  at  the  edges  where  the  bale  is  held  by  its  steel 
bands.  At  first  this  paper  was  supplied,  in  a  makeshift  way, 
by  crinkling  paper  by  hand  at  the  baling  plant  and  then 
waterproofing  it.  But  in  order  to  obtain  an  adequate  commer- 
cial supply.  Major  Abercrombie  invented  a  special  expansive 
paper  consisting  of  an  asphalt  film  between  two  sheets  of 
paper,  the  whole  corrugated.  He  patented  this  paper  and 
assigned  the  patent  to  the  Government  for  free  use. 

Experiments  went  on  at  the  plant  until  it  was  scientifically 
determined  just  how  much  compression  any  given  textile  arti- 
cle could  stand  without  injury  to  the  fabric.  Bales  were 
usually  made  up  of  small  bundles  of  regulation  size,  called 
"bricks"  by  the  balers.  It  was  found  that  the  most  garments 
could  be  placed  in  a  bale  by  making  up  a  bale  of  these  smaller 
bundles.  Besides  "bricks,"  there  were  other  constituent  pack- 
ages with  special  names.  A  "brick"  was  143^  inches  long  and 
75^  inches  wide;  four  "bricks,"  it  will  be  perceived,  made  the 
bottom  layer  of  a  bale.  A  "bundle"  was  29  inches  long  and 
143^  inches  wide;  it  made  one  entire  layer  in  the  bale.  A  "half 
bundle"  was  as  long  as  the  bale,  but  only  half  as  wide;  there 
were  two  "half  bundles"  to  a  layer.  A  "double  brick"  was  as 
wide  as  the  bale  but  only  half  as  long;  two  of  these,  also,  made 
a  layer.  These  forms  of  packages  were  adapted  to  various  gar- 
ments to  be  baled.  The  garments  were  first  folded  into  these 
forms  and  then  squeezed  in  a  hand  press  until  they  held  the 
bricklike  shape.  The  bale  was  made  up  of  as  many  "bundles," 


i64  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

"bricks,"  "half  bundles,"  and  "double  bricks"  as  it  required; 
then  it  was  subjected  to  hydraulic  pressure.  When  such  small 
articles  as  mittens  or  leggins  were  so  packed,  comer  boards 
were  used  in  the  bales. 

The  economies  wrought  by  baling  were  both  numerous  and 
large.  Assuming  that  white  pine  cases  had  been  available,  the 
number  of  garments  making  up  a  loo-pound  bale  would  have 
required,  if  boxed,  84  pounds  of  lumber  and  other  casing  mate- 
rials. The  elimination  of  this  material  effected  a  saving  in 
weight  of  more  than  forty-five  per  cent.  This  weight-saving 
was  important  in  the  handling  of  supplies,  particularly  on 
trucks.  It  cost  about  $2  an  hour  to  operate  a  truck.  At  that  rate 
it  cost  eight  cents  an  hour  to  truck  one  bale  of  garments. 
Boxed,  the  same  number  of  garments,  hauled  at  the  same 
trucking  rate,  cost  twenty  cents;  in  other  words,  baling  saved 
sixty  per  cent.  Shippers  reckon  cargo  space  by  ship-tons,  a 
ship-ton  being  an  arbitrary  cubic  measurement.  Stevedores, 
in  loading  the  hold  of  a  vessel,  could  average  sixty-five  cased 
army  overcoats  to  the  ship-ton.  Bale  the  overcoats,  and  they 
could  pack  150  in  each  ship-ton — a  space  saving  of  sixty  per 
cent. 

Baling  also  saved  much  operating  space  at  the  shipping  ter- 
minal; for,  of  course,  a  much  larger  storage  space  is  required 
for  boxing  materials  than  for  baling' materials.  Three  cubic 
feet  of  burlap  and  paper  will  cover  fifty  bales  of  goods.  To 
cover  the  same  goods  cased  requires  620  cubic  feet  of  lumber, 
nails,  etc.  The  average  cost  of  baling  during  the  war  was 
eighty  cents  a  bale;  casing  the  same  number  of  garments  cost 
$4.09.  In  overseas  shipments,  even  at  the  low  freight  rates 
secured  by  the  Government,  each  bale  saved  $62.1 13^  in  ocean 
freight  charges.  Since  up  to  March  1,  1919,  the  Brooklyn 
baling  plant  alone  packed  well  over  a  million  bales  of  cloth- 
ing equipment  for  the  A.  E.  F.,  the  single  item  of  ocean 
freight  charges  on  clothing  was  reduced  by  upwards  of  $60,- 
000,000.  In  addition,  the  saving  in  ship-tons  brought  about 
by  this  baling  amounted  to  nearly  140,000,  or  the  equivalent 
of  more  than  200,000  deadweight  tons  of  ocean  shipping. 


SPACE-SAVING  IN  CAR  AND  SHIP  165 

Moreover,  clothing  shipped  in  this  way  was  subject  to 
scarcely  any  losses  in  transit.  The  breaking  of  a  packing  case 
often  meant  the  ruin  of  its  contents,  but  a  bale  of  clothing 
could  be  dropped  into  the  water  and  fished  out  again  without 
damage.  The  compression  was  so  tight  that  water  penetrated 
the  bale  with  great  difficulty,  even  if  it  succeeded  in  getting 
through  the  waterproof  paper  covering.  One  of  our  ships  con- 
taining baled  supplies  sank  in  harbor.  Several  days  later  she 
was  raised  from  the  bottom,  and  the  recovered  bales  were 
found  to  be  dry  and  in  good  condition;  whereas  the  cases 
aboard  the  sunken  ship  were  water-soaked  and  their  contents 
ruined  by  muck,  salt,  and  grease. 

Baling  also  saved  space  that  had  been  given  over  to  the 
shipment  of  large  quantities  of  burlap  to  the  A.  E.  F.  for 
use  in  making  sandbags  for  fortifications.  Each  bale  was 
wrapped  in  two  sheets  of  burlap,  each  one  of  which  would 
cut  into  exactly  four  sandbags.  Nor  was  any  of  the  other  baling 
material  wasted  on  the  other  side.  The  comer  boards  made 
dugout  shingles  or  splints  for  use  by  the  Medical  Corps.  The 
steel  bands  on  the  bales  were  the  right  size  for  revetment 
fastenings. 

The  proper  marking  of  bales  was  a  matter  for  scientific 
consideration.  French  stevedores  might  understand  enough 
English  to  be  able  to  handle  our  packages  according  to  direc- 
tions; but  on  the  docks  in  France  were  Singhalese  and  laborers 
of  other  strange  nationalities  who  could  read  neither  English 
nor  French.  All  our  standard  baled  supplies  were  given,  there- 
fore, stock  numbers,  and  the  packages  were  marked  by  a  system 
of  Arabic  numerals.  These  the  foreign  workmen  on  the  docks 
could  read.  The  system  worked  so  well  that  it  has  now  been 
adopted  as  standard.  Incidentally,  much  study  has  been  given 
to  the  marking  of  other  supplies  and  to  the  correct  wording 
for  such  markings.  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  passing  that  the 
English  word  ''fragile,"  derived  from  the  Latin,  is  understood 
by  folk  of  many  nationalities,  who  have  similar  words  from 
the  same  root  in  their  own  tongues. 

Baling  is  not  by  any  means  a  modern  discovery.  From  the 


i66  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

most  ancient  times,  men  have  shipped  goods  in  bales;  and 
even  to-day  the  most  primitive  peoples  of  the  earth  make 
extensive  employment  of  this  form  of  packing.  The  Chinese 
are  expert  in  the  art  of  baling.  Magnificent  rugs  come  out  of 
the  countries  north  of  India  in  bales.  Boxing,  in  fact,  is  a 
product  of  European  civilization.  The  British  Army  also 
adopted  a  system  of  baling;  but  the  British  bales  were 
not  uniform  in  size,  as  ours  were.  Our  bales  also  maintained 
a  consistent  density  for  articles  of  the  same  specific  gravity, 
a  claim  which  could  not  be  made  for  British  bales.  Moreover, 
American  army  bales  were  compressed  to  a  greater  density. 
On  the  whole,  a  comparison  seems  to  justify  the  assertion  that 
our  system  was  scientifically  superior. 


PART  TWO 
THE  PORT 


Photo  by   11, in.,    ^     I       /  ,/ 

BRIGADIER  GENERAL  FRANK  T.  HINES 

CJtief  of  E/Nbdrkiition  Service^  Janudr\\  igiS— December, 

igiS;  Chief  of  Transportation  Service, 

December,  igiS-Auyust,  ig20 


CHAPTER  XIII 

A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY 

A  LONG  the  picturesque  spine  of  the  Hudson  Palisades 
J-\  lay  Camp  Merritt,  most  beautiful  of  all  American 
^  JLmilitary  posts  created  during  the  World  War.  Of  the 
splendid  force  that  upheld  the  prestige  of  American  arms  in 
France,  a  full  quarter  tarried  by  the  way  in  Camp  Merritt, 
brief  guests  awaiting  embarkation  on  transatlantic  ships.  To 
more  than  half  a  million  young  crusaders,  solemnly  but 
eagerly  setting  their  faces  toward  the  east,  Camp  Merritt  bade 
farewell  as  they  departed  on  the  great  adventure,  to  many  of 
them  the  greatest  of  all  adventures,  and  the  last.  To  an  even 
larger  number  of  returning  heroes  Camp  Merritt  cried  "Hail  I" 
as,  with  faces  turned  westward,  they  saw — nay,  now  all  but 
touched — beyond  the  wooded  horizon,  the  blessed  vision  of 
discharge  and  home  and  peace.  In  the  two  years  between  the 
autumn  of  1917  and  that  of  1919,  more  than  a  million  Ameri- 
can soldiers  experienced,  for  a  few  days  at  least,  the  hospital- 
ity of  the  camp.  Camp  Merritt  was  one  of  the  great  caravan- 
saries on  the  road  to  France. 

In  the  prosy  chart  of  army  organization,  Camp  Merritt 
hangs  on  its  proper  hook,  a  sub-branch  of  the  New  York  Port 
of  Embarkation.  Tell  it  not  to  the  overseas  soldier,  though, 
that  Merritt  was  anything  subordinate.  To  him  it  is  a  bold 
landmark  graven  in  the  intaglio  of  his  war  memory.  It  was 
the  jumping-off  place,  the  starting  point  of  the  crowded, 
excited  period  of  embarkation. 

The  impressions  of  those  hours  can  never  be  forgotten.  The 
soldier  reached  Camp  Merritt  grimed  and  wear}^  from  a  rail 
journey  across,  perhaps,  half  the  continent.  Merritt  offered 
him  rest  just  at  the  time  when,  in  the  stir  and  bustle  of  prepa- 
ration, rest  seemed  impossible.  To  the  inland  youth,  if  he  were 


170  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

of  the  lucky  ones  who  received  twenty-four  hours'  leave,  the 
camp  offered,  too,  more  probably  than  not,  the  first  oppor- 
tunity of  his  life  to  see  the  great  city  just  across  the  Hudson. 
And  after  that  the  departure — the  silent  march  out  of  the 
camp  in  the  dead  of  night,  down  the  macadamized  highway 
to  the  river,  the  last  quarter-mile  of  it  upon  a  thoroughfare 
that  was  half  road  and  half  trail,  descending  stiffly  to  the 
water's  edge;  there  the  landing,  a  platform  open  to  the  sky, 
lighted  by  incandescent  clusters,  its  bitts  mooring  a  small 
squadron  of  river  ferry-boats,  lumpish  craft  soon  packed  to 
their  gates  by  the  brown-clad  travelers.  Then  the  dark  river, 
now  and  then  streaked  with  undulating  golden  ribbons  from 
waterside  lights  that  grew  thicker  after  an  hour  or  so,  when 
the  boat  left  Spuyten  Duyvil  Creek  behind  and  began  hooting 
for  a  passage  through  the  never-ceasing  traffic  of  North  River. 
Then  the  jutting,  brick-and-stone  headland  of  lower  Man- 
hattan, thrusting  its  vague  silhouette  against  the  graying  east- 
em  sky.  Next  the  pier,  tucked  in  between  the  projecting  sterns 
of  monster  transports;  the  climb  up  from  the  ferry-boat;  the 
echoing  vault  of  the  roofed  pier,  dusky  in  spite  of  its  myriad 
white  arcs ;  long  tables  spread  with  sandwiches  and  doughnuts, 
and  Red  Cross  women  at  rolling  coffee  urns;  inspections, 
inspections,  and  more  inspections — medical  inspections,  equip- 
ment inspections,  alienage  inspections,  inspections  by  intelli- 
gence officers — and  instructions  of  many  sorts. 

Outside,  the  city  now  roars  into  wakefulness  and  a  new  day. 
The  embarkation  force  comes  on  duty.  Then  the  gangplank, 
the  loud  roll-call,  the  sharp  scrutiny  of  individuals;  at  the 
top  of  the  climb,  the  mail  bag  for  the  "safe-arrival"  postcards 
and  the  last  letters  home.  After  that,  the  crowded  standee 
berths  erected  in  holds,  companion  ways,  nooks,  corners — any 
place  where  there  had  been  a  trifle  of  spare  room.  A  peremp- 
tory order  confined  one  to  these  stuffy,  congested  quarters  dur- 
ing the  trip  down  the  bay,  lest  enemy  eyes  on  shore  or  on 
some  harbor  craft  mark  this  as  a  troopship.  And  so  the  chance 
to  sleep,  welcome  to  men  drawn  and  haggard  with  twenty- 
four  hours  on  their  feet;  the  awakening  to  nauseous  motion 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  171 

and  the  vibrant  shudder  of  driving  screws;  permission  to  go 
on  deck;  the  whip  of  salt  wind,  refreshing  as  a  cold  dip;  far 
to  the  northward  the  faint  cloud  of  the  Long  Island  shore, 
elsewhere  tumbling  waters;  and,  from  the  horizon  rim  ahead 
to  that  of  the  sunset,  a  double  file  of  transports,  grotesquely 
streaked  with  deceptive  bands  of  paint,  escorted  by  flanking 
destroyers;  dirigibles  and  airplanes  overhead  and,  far  in  the 
van,  a  towed  balloon. 

Such  is  the  typical  individual  soldier's  retrospect  of  em- 
barkation— an  experience  brief  in  point  of  time,  yet  so  novel 
to  most  who  underwent  it  that  it  impressed  its  consecutive 
details  deeply  in  the  memory.  It  began  at  the  embarkation 
camp,  which  therefore  figured  as  the  bisector  between  home 
and  overseas  service. 

Merritt  was  by  no  means  the  only  embarkation  camp.  Also 
at  New  York  was  Camp  Mills,  originally  the  canvas  camp 
of  the  Forty-second  Division,  a  National  Guard  organiza- 
tion, but  during  the  most  momentous  months  of  1918  exclu- 
sively an  embarkation  camp  with  continuous  accommoda- 
tion for  40,000  transient  troops.  Part  of  Camp  Upton, 
Long  Island,  was  also  set  aside  for  the  reception  of  soldiers 
awaiting  embarkation.  At  the  Newport  News,  Virginia,  Port 
of  Embarkation  were  two  more  embarkation  camps,  Camp 
Stewart  and  Camp  Hill,  as  well  as  special  camps  for  embarking 
aviators,  artillerymen,  and  labor  troops. 

Of  the  embarkation  camps,  Merritt  was  the  first  established. 
It  shared  with  Camp  Mills  the  distinction  of  being  the  largest. 
In  beauty  it  surpassed  all  other  camps  of  any  kind  within  the 
United  States,  not  even  excepting  Camp  Lewis  at  American 
Lake,  Washington.  Because  of  certain  special  functions,  Camp 
Merritt  was  likewise  the  most  important  of  the  embarkation 
camps.  The  Embarkation  Service  regarded  it  as  its  model 
camp.  To  avoid  the  tedium  and  possible  confusion  of  attempt- 
ing to  describe  all  the  embarkation  camps,  this  narrative  will 
picture  overseas  embarkation  as  it  occurred  from  Camp  Mer- 
ritt; and  the  reader  will  understand  that  Merritt,  in  most  of 
its  activities,  was  eminently  typical. 


172  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

First,  something  about  the  site  of  Camp  Merritt — a  square 
mile  or  more  of  characteristic  New  York  suburban  territory, 
not  quite  come  to  full  development.  The  southerly  pickets  of 
the  camp  were  two  or  three  miles  from  the  northern  limits  of 
the  town  of  Tenafly,  New  Jersey.  Tenafly  is  somewhat  inland. 
Its  adjacent  waterside  community  is  Fort  Lee,  New  Jersey, 
so  named  from  a  fortification  erected  by  revolutionary  troops 
in  1776,  From  Fort  Lee,  ferry-boats  run  every  few  minutes 
directly  to  West  125th  Street,  New  York's  principal  uptown 
Rialto.  The  ferry  station  on  the  New  York  side  is  convenient 
to  the  Manhattan  rapid  transit  system. 

In  this  New  Jersey  district  north  of  Tenafly,  and  three  or 
four  miles  back  from  the  Hudson,  the  Government  leased  a 
solid  rectangular  block  of  ground,  regardless  of  the  state  of 
development  of  the  included  parcels  of  land.  Through  a  part 
of  the  site  ran  a  splendid  highway,  paved  with  the  meticulous 
smoothness  demanded  of  their  surburban  roads  by  the  motor- 
ists of  New  York.  Some  of  the  cross  streets  found  in  the  camp 
site  were  paved  and  improved;  others  were  merely  dirt  roads 
ending  eventually,  at  the  range  of  hills  to  the  west,  in  rotting 
corduroy  construction  laid  down  originally  by  the  troops  of 
General  George  Washington.  The  site  was  a  level  plateau 
sloping  slightly  to  the  southward  and  broken  with  forests  and 
clearings.  Here  and  there  were  magnificent  shade  trees,  oaks 
and  elms  singly  and  in  clusters;  here  and  there,  too,  were  the 
countryseats  and  estates  of  well-to-do  urbanites.  At  the  north- 
em  end  of  the  camp,  farther  away  from  the  city,  were  the  barns 
and  outbuildings  of  occasional  small  truck  farms. 

The  builders  of  the  camp  preserved  its  scenic  beauty  as 
completely  as  they  could.  The  new  dwellings  there  and  the 
weather-beaten  and  lichened  houses  were  alike  fitted  into  the 
general  building  scheme  as  structures  useful  to  the  post — homes 
for  nurses  or  officers,  or  headquarters  for  various  military  or 
welfare  organizations.  The  axes  spared  the  ancient  trees,  and 
the  barracks  were  placed  in  the  old  clearings.  Even  some  of 
the  orchards  were  left,  for  the  sake  of  their  shade  and  their 
fruit.  The  planners  took  full  advantage  of  the  roads  already 


Drawn  by  Albert  Hoit  Bumstead 

PORT  OF  EMBARK:A.TI0N,  new  YORK 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  173 

there,  and  in  general  built  the  camp  to  conform  with  the  ter- 
rain as  they  found  it.  Finally,  marvel  of  marvels,  some  super- 
officer  did  what  no  other  camp  quartermaster  was  able  to  do: 
he  obtained  funds  wherewith  to  paint  the  camp.  A  battery 
of  painting  machines  sprayed  the  pigment  on  the  buildings, 
and  window  and  door  casings  and  eaves  were  trimmed  by  hand. 
When  the  builders  finally  left  Camp  Merritt,  it  stood  a  green 
and  white  city  for  40,000  men,  heavily  shaded,  cut  by  fine 
streets,  and  including  among  its  more  than  a  thousand  struc- 
tures fifteen  or  twenty  buildings  of  some  architectural  pre- 
tension. Camp  Merritt  must  have  appeared  as  a  refreshing 
surprise  to  tens  of  thousands  of  soldiers  lately  come  from  the 
usual  drab,  unpainted,  grassless,  and  shadeless  training  camps. 

Not  only  were  surroundings  beautiful,  but  they  were  of  sur- 
passing historic  interest.  Within  the  camp  limits  there  was 
a  spot  where  a  handful  of  revolutionary  patriots  had  been 
slaughtered  by  the  mercenaries  hired  out  by  the  Prince  of 
Hesse  to  the  Redcoat  Army.  The  road  cut  in  the  face  of  the 
Palisades,  down  which  a  great  part  of  our  overseas  army 
moved  in  1918  to  reach  the  ferry  landing,  was  built  originally 
by  Lord  Comwallis  in  his  military  operations  out  of  New 
York  against  the  Revolutionists.  Across  this  country  General 
Washington  marched  and  countermarched  before  retiring  to 
Valley  Forge.  It  was  a  region  for  traitors  and  spies  during  the 
Revolution,  a  rendezvous  for  the  bearers  of  illicit  communica- 
tions. Just  north  of  the  limits  of  the  camp  Major  Andre  paid 
the  extreme  penalty  for  being  caught  within  the  American 
lines. 

After  the  Revolution,  the  region  outdid  its  native  son  Rip 
Van  Winkle  by  sleeping  for  six  times  twenty  years.  Then  the 
movies  were  invented,  and  the  Palisades  country  became  once 
more  the  scene  of  stirring  incident  and  dramatic  denouement. 
Here,  in  close  proximity  to  New  York,  were  quiet  rural  mead- 
ows and  sun-dappled  woodland  paths,  separated  by  only  a 
river's  breadth  from  the  great  city.  The  region  soon  came  to 
be  a  favorite  "location"  for  the  moving-picture  companies 
whose  studios  were  in  the  metropolis.  Here  at  Camp  Merritt, 


174  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

thousands  of  genuine  heroes  in  olive  drab,  on  the  verge  of 
departure  for  a  sterner  stage,  saw  mimic  heroes  exhibiting 
their  prowess  before  the  eye  of  the  cinema.  Every  sunny  day 
the  moving-picture  troupes  were  out  on  the  roads  between 
Camp  Merritt  and  the  Hudson  River  ferries;  and  the  inquisi- 
tive doughboy  caught  glimpses  of  this  strange  world  and  duly 
catalogued  them  among  his  war  reminiscences. 

By  early  July,  1917,  it  had  become  evident  to  the  War 
Department  that  the  Army  Transport  Service,  the  military 
organization  at  New  York  which  had  been  charged  with  water 
transportation,  and  which  had  superintended  the  embarkation 
of  the  First  Division,  was  inadequate  to  the  work  ahead.  The 
Army  Transport  Service  had  been  a  branch  of  the  New  York 
quartermaster  depot.  The  time  had  now  come  when  military 
transportation  could  no  longer  be  regarded  as  an  incidental 
quartermaster  undertaking.  Because  of  the  conditions  under 
which  we  fought,  transportation  had  inevitably  become  one 
of  the  major  military  operations.  America's  position  was 
unique.  Other  belligerents  could  subordinate  their  transporta- 
tion :  the  fighting  area  was  right  at  their  doors.  We,  three  thou- 
sand miles  away,  had  to  put  transportation  on  a  parity  with 
the  training  and  equipment  of  troops  and  the  actual  maneu- 
vering of  them  in  battle.  The  American  Transportation  Ser- 
vice, put  to  the  test,  waxed  correspondingly  expert  and  power- 
ful; and  eventually  it  performed  the  miracle  which  was 
America's  chief  contribution  to  the  enduring  military  history 
of  the  World  War — the  miracle  of  setting  an  army  of 
2,000,000  men  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean  in  little  more  than  a 
twelvemonth. 

Upon  the  Army  Transport  Service  as  a  foundation,  the 
War  Department  erected  at  New  York  the  Port  of  Embarka- 
tion, a  distinct  branch  of  the  Army.  Its  commander,  a  major 
general,  set  up  headquarters  at  Hoboken,  at  the  seized  piers 
of  the  German  transatlantic  steamship  companies.  The  Port, 
regarded  for  the  present  purpose  as  an  organization  of  men, 
was  charged  with  the  administration  of  all  details  of  the  em- 
barkation of  troops  and  of  the  loading  of  supplies  which 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  175 

passed  through  New  York  and  the  subsidiary  ports.  These 
details  included  the  direction  of  the  army  transports,  owned 
or  chartered.  The  Port  at  once  made  requisition  for  a  place 
set  apart — a  camp  in  which  overseas  troops  might  remain  while 
awaiting  their  ships.  Ocean  traffic  was  hazardous  and  uncer- 
tain. It  was  impossible  to  discount  all  accidents  and  delays 
in  inland  transportation.  The  organization  could  not  coordi- 
nate train  movements  with  vessel  movements  so  infallibly  that 
incoming  troops  would  always  reach  the  port  at  the  exact 
moment  when  the  ships  were  ready  for  them.  There  had  to  be 
provided  a  reservoir  of  men  at  the  port — an  embarkation  camp. 

How  far  short  of  what  was  actually  to  occur  were  the  early 
estimates  of  the  volume  of  traffic  which  would  pass  through 
New  York,  the  fleeting  weeks  were  soon  to  show.  As  plotted 
on  paper  early  in  August,  1917,  Camp  Merritt  was  to  have 
capacity  for  only  20,000  men.  That  capacity  seemed  adequate. 
Moreover,  the  Port  asked  for  no  other  embarkation  camp — 
only  for  the  one.  But  greater  and  greater  grew  the  power  of  the 
American  Army  to  train  troops  and  transport  them,  more  and 
more  insistent  the  demands  of  the  Allies  for  troops.  Within 
four  months  the  army  constructors  started  on  a  project  which 
eventually  doubled  the  size  of  Camp  Merritt.  Camp  Mills, 
with  a  capacity  equal  to  that  of  the  enlarged  Camp  Merritt, 
was  added  to  the  port  scheme;  Camp  Upton,  the  Long  Island 
cantonment,  ceded  a  block  of  space  to  the  Port;  and  still,  with 
accommodations  for  80,000  to  100,000,  the  facilities  for  men 
awaiting  embarkation  were  far  short  of  the  requirements.  The 
goal  toward  which  the  armistice  found  the  New  York  Port 
of  Embarkation  striving  was  rest-camp  facilities  for  200,000 
men — an  equipment  that  would  have  been  none  too  large  in 
1919,  judged  by  the  rate  at  which  the  troop-transport  fleet  was 
growing  and  by  the  expansion  of  the  Government's  plans  for 
the  induction  and  training  of  soldiers. 

The  earliest  conception  of  an  embarkation  camp  postulated 
merely  a  temporary  shelter  for  the  care  of  troops  during  a 
few  hours'  or  days'  delay  in  sailing.  But  military  evolution 
soon  gave  the  embarkation  camp  a  more  significant  place  in 


176  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  scheme  of  operation.  It  became  the  reservoir  upon  which 
the  transports  drew  for  their  passengers.  When  offensive 
operations  came  to  an  end,  the  plan  in  operation  was  to  main- 
tain constantly  in  the  embarkation  camps  at  New  York  a 
reservoir  of  60,000  men.  Even  this  number  was  insufficient 
to  insure  absolutely  against  the  day  when  a  transport  might 
lie  empty  at  a  New  York  dock  with  no  troops  at  the  port  to 
go  aboard  her.  The  ideal,  as  our  embarkation  officers  learned 
by  experience,  was  a  reserve  of  men  at  the  port  sufficient  to 
meet  half  the  sailing  needs  of  an  entire  month.  At  the  height 
of  travel  in  the  summer  of  1918,  we  were  embarking  at  New 
York  upwards  of  225,000  men  a  month.  Consequently,  em- 
barkation-camp space  at  New  York,  to  have  been  adequate, 
should  have  given  accommodations  to  at  least  110,000  men; 
whereas  the  actual  space,  filled  to  capacity,  could  accommo- 
date only  about  80,000.  The  embarkations  at  that  time,  it 
will  be  seen,  emptied  the  camps  nearly  three  times  every  thirty 
days.  Only  the  extraordinarily  well-managed  adjustment  of 
inland  travel  to  the  sailing  schedules  prevented  breaks  in  the 
flow  of  troops.  Although  the  program  of  military  expansion 
in  1919 — the  so-called  80-division  program — did  not  call  for 
the  shipment  of  more  than  300,000  men  in  any  one  month, 
there  might  well  have  arisen  an  emergency  in  which  it  would 
have  been  necessary  to  embark  500,000.  To  meet  such  an 
emergency  easily,  the  Port  of  Embarkation  at  New  York 
should  have  had  camp  space  for  at  least  200,000  men;  and 
this,  as  we  have  noted,  was  the  goal  toward  which  develop- 
ment was  actually  tending. 

It  was  through  these  four  or  five  pools,  the  embarkation 
camps,  that  the  entire  expeditionary  army  flowed;  and  hence 
it  was  here  that  the  military  authorities  could  most  conven- 
iently and  thoroughly  subject  the  overseas  forces  to  a  final 
scrutiny.  A  small,  highly  expert  inspection  service,  working 
here,  was  able  to  make  sure  that  every  man  who  went  to  France 
went  properly  equipped,  not  only  in  material  supplies,  but 
likewise  in  physique  and  morale.  The  War  Department  contin- 
ually issued  orders  to  the  whole  Army  relating  to  the  selection 


From  An   Official  Motion  Picture 

OVERSEAS  TRANSIENTS  OCCUPYING  BARRACKS, 
CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

READING  ROOM  IN  MERRITT  HALL 


Fhvtu   by   Siyiial   toipi 

TROOPS  ARRIVING  AT  CAMP  MERRITT  STATION 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

MARCHING  INTO  CAMP  MERRITT 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  177 

of  men  for  foreign  service  and  to  their  proper  equipment  for  it ; 
and  it  was  at  the  port  that  the  authorities  certified  to  their 
own  satisfaction  that  these  regulations  had  been  enforced. 
Here  at  the  embarkation  camps  the  inspection  of  clothing  and 
all  other  equipment  was  most  severe,  and  here  were  issued  the 
enormous  quantities  of  supplies  that  made  the  American 
Army,  so  far  as  the  individual  soldier  was  concerned,  the  best 
clothed  and  the  most  completely  equipped  that  set  foot  on  the 
soil  of  France.  And  the  inspection  went  beyond  these  materials 
of  war.  It  went  into  the  soldier's  health  and  his  mental  atti- 
tude. The  embarkation  camps  became  the  Army's  filters  for 
straining  out  the  dangerous  alien,  the  spy,  and  the  man  of 
questionable  loyalty  to  the  United  States. 

The  contractor  started  the  construction  of  Camp  Merritt 
on  August  20,  1917.  By  September  17  the  camp  was  partially 
ready  for  occupancy,  and  the  camp  commander  moved  in  and 
set  up  headquarters.  Two  weeks  later,  various  troops  for  the 
operation  of  the  camp  were  in  their  barracks.  The  permanent 
guard  regiment  was  the  49th  Infantry,  2,000  men.  In  early 
October  the  camp  accommodated  its  first  transient  visitors, 
two  engineer  service  battalions,  each  of  about  100  men.  In 
November  nearly  5,000  troops  passed  through  the  camp  to 
the  transports.  In  December  the  first  phase  of  construction  was 
completed,  and  the  first  big  troop  movement  began  when 
numerous  organizations  of  the  Forty-first  Division  moved  into 
Camp  Merritt — 13,000  troops  in  all,  of  whom  nearly  5,000 
embarked  that  month. 

On  December  20  construction  began  on  a  large  addition  to 
the  camp,  designed  to  raise  its  capacity  to  35,000  troops.  The 
building  operations  continued  throughout  the  winter  and 
spring;  week  by  week  new  barracks  were  added.  In  January 
about  14,000  troops  went  through  Camp  Merritt;  in  Febru- 
ary the  number  was  nearly  30,000;  in  March  it  was  close  to 
45,000.  In  April  about  47,000  officers  and  enlisted  men  expe- 
rienced the  hospitality  of  the  camp.  In  May  the  transients 
numbered  close  to  50,000.  In  June  came  a  great  jump,  almost 
to  82,000 — a  figure  equivalent  to  the  emptying  and  refilling 


178  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

of  the  camp  two  and  a  half  times  in  four  weeks.  A  soldier 
might  remain  at  the  camp  as  long  as  two  weeks  before  proceed- 
ing to  Hoboken  for  embarkation ;  but  a  commoner  experience 
was  to  be  there  only  twenty-four  hours. 

In  June  a  second  addition  to  the  camp  was  authorized,  to 
bring  the  capacity  up  to  45,000.  This  construction  was  com- 
pleted in  time  to  serve  the  demobilization. 

Camp  Merritt  had  every  convenience  and  luxury  that  could 
be  given  to  a  military  post  of  this  sort.  Its  equipment  included 
1,302  buildings,  of  which  611  were  two-story  barracks,  each 
with  accommodations  for  sixty-six  men.  It  possessed  complete 
water,  sewage,  electric,  and  heating  systems,  mess  halls,  stores, 
fire  stations,  garages,  a  great  chain  of  warehouses,  a  refrigera- 
tion plant  sufficient  for  the  victualing  of  45,000  men,  a 
bakery,  a  theatre,  and  also  the  best  equipment  of  social  and 
welfare  buildings  erected  at  any  camp  in  the  United  States. 

The  camp's  chief  deficiency  was  its  lack  of  railroad  facili- 
ties. The  site  lay  between  the  West  Shore  Railroad  and  the 
Erie,  about  a  mile  from  the  nearest  station  on  either  line.  It 
was  expected  by  the  designers  of  the  camp  that  one  or  the 
other  of  these  railroads  would  build  a  passenger  terminal 
within  the  camp.  Because  of  the  expense,  neither  road  cared  to 
undertake  this,  although  the  West  Shore  ran  a  freight  switch 
to  the  camp  warehouses.  Troops  arriving  at  camp  by  train 
had  to  march,  sometimes,  two  miles  to  reach  their  barracks. 

There  was,  however,  another  means  of  transportation  be- 
tween the  camp  and  the  piers — the  natural  deep-water  artery 
of  the  Hudson.  On  the  river  near  the  camp  was  Alpine  Land- 
ing. Before  1918  only  occasional  excursion  steamers  touched 
there,  or  lighters  carrying  supplies  to  the  New  Jersey  com- 
munities. The  landing  was  simply  an  open,  unroofed  plat- 
form, but  it  could  be  used  as  a  ferry  slip.  In  May,  1918,  the 
Port  of  Embarkation  chartered  several  ferry-boats  and  began 
to  operate  them  between  Alpine  Landing  and  the  piers  in 
North  River,  a  distance  of  some  twelve  miles.  This  innovation 
put  upon  the  troops  the  burden  of  marching  about  three  miles 
from  the  camp  to  the  river  landing;  but  it  saved  the  Govern- 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  179 

ment  $75,000  or  more,  which  was  something,  and,  what  was 
more,  it  saved  the  terminal  railroads  at  New  York  the  work 
of  transporting  hundreds  of  thousands  of  troops  for  this  short 
distance.  The  metropolitan  railroad  managers  testified  that, 
but  for  the  Camp  Merritt  ferry  service,  they  would  have  had 
to  devote  hundreds  of  passenger  cars  to  the  transportation  of 
troops  on  this  route  and  perhaps,  at  times  of  greatest  military 
activity,  to  curtail  by  so  much  the  normal  suburban  traffic 
facilities  at  New  York. 

Soldier- welfare  work  took  a  prominent  place  in  the  activi- 
ties of  all  the  embarkation  camps.  Here  at  the  last  stopping 
place  on  American  soil  it  was  particularly  desirable  that  the 
troops  should  experience  in  concrete  form  the  approval  and 
gratitude  of  the  American  people.  Here  was  the  final  oppor- 
tunity to  inspirit  them  and  to  build  up  their  morale.  Not  that 
their  courage  was  flagging ;  but  they  were  facing  invisible  dan- 
gers amid  strange  surroundings,  at  sea — and  most  of  these  lads 
had  never  seen  the  ocean.  Every  effort  was  made  to  put  the 
men  on  the  ships  in  a  buoyant  mood  that  should  carry  them 
triumphantly  through  the  perils  of  the  deep. 

There  was  another  phase  of  welfare  work  at  the  embarka- 
tion camps — a  pathetic  phase.  It  was  here  that  thousands  of 
mothers  and  fathers,  wives,  sisters,  brothers,  and  sweethearts 
said  their  farewells  to  the  boys  who  were  going  across.  It 
became  a  special  problem  to  take  care  of  these  relatives  and 
friends,  who  were  often  simple  country  folk,  unacquainted 
with  travel.  At  Camp  Merritt  this  work  was  the  concern  of 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  of  the  War  Camp 
Community  Service,  and  of  several  other  welfare  organiza- 
tions. 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  buildings  at  Camp  Merritt  was 
the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  Hostess  House  just  inside  the  main  entrance. 
The  house  was  built  in  the  Elizabethan  style,  with  broad 
gables  and  wide  verandas.  The  furnishings  were  comfortable, 
even  luxurious.  The  Y.  W.  C.  A.  opened  this  building  for 
service  late  in  September,  1918.  Prior  to  its  dedication  the 
organization  had  occupied  two  other  buildings  at  the  camp. 


i8o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

The  first  of  these  was  a  fine  old  countryseat  at  the  top  of  a 
hill  near  one  of  the  entrances ;  it  commanded  a  beautiful  view 
of  the  valley  east  of  the  camp  and  of  the  Palisades  beyond. 
This  mansion  was  opened  as  a  Hostess  House  on  the  first  day 
of  December,  1917,  and  within  a  few  days  it  began  receiving 
an  unexpected  number  of  visitors.  The  villages  of  Dumont  and 
Cresskill,  New  Jersey,  near  Camp  Merritt,  possessed  no  ade- 
quate hotel  accommodations;  Tenafly  was  several  miles  away 
and  accessible  only  by  automobile  and  by  infrequent  trains; 
the  journey  into  New  York  from  the  camp,  by  a  combination 
of  automobile,  ferry-boat,  and  rapid-transit  train  on  the  island 
of  Manhattan,  was  calculated  to  dismay  a  country  woman 
unused  to  travel.  Often  the  visitors  arrived  at  camp  late  at 
night.  The  Hostess  House  was  never  so  full  that  a  bed  could 
not  be  provided  for  one  more;  and  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  workers 
secured  hundreds  of  additional  rooms  for  visitors  in  the  sur- 
rounding communities. 

Those  who  made  the  pilgrimage  to  the  camp  were  for  the 
most  part  women — women  of  all  ages,  from  immature  girls 
to  wrinkled  and  white-haired  grandmothers — and  often  they 
were  alone  and  in  need  of  protection.  Farewells  were  usually 
courageous,  but  almost  always  they  were  deeply  emotional. 
Some  came  too  late  to  see  their  soldiers.  Some  found  the  trip 
more  costly  than  they  had  expected,  and  were  stranded  at  the 
camp.  The  Hostess  House  relieved  such  distress — with  sym- 
pathy for  the  sorrowing  and  with  money  for  those  who  needed 
it.  One  bitter  day  in  winter  a  father  and  mother  who  had 
traveled  all  the  way  from  Montana  reached  the  Hostess 
House,  only  to  learn  they  were  two  hours  late :  their  son's  unit 
had  departed.  In  dumb  disappointment  they  shouldered  their 
way  out  again  into  the  storm.  Another,  a  wife  who  came  to 
say  good-bye  to  her  husband,  found  him  dying  of  pneumonia 
in  the  camp  hospital. 

The  work  of  finding  men  in  the  shifting  population  of  the 
camp,  that  they  might  come  out  to  meet  their  visitors,  was  a 
difficult  task.  It  required  at  the  Hostess  House  a  proficient 
information  bureau  in  touch  with  the  ever-changing  transient 


A  HALT  BY  THE  WAY  181 

personnel.  During  the  period  of  embarkation  the  Hostess 
House  at  Camp  Merritt  located  over  75,000  soldiers  and  sum- 
moned them  to  meet  their  friends;  and  it  served  at  least 
200,000  meals  to  those  who  claimed  its  hospitality. 

Another  out-of-the-ordinary  department  of  welfare  work  at 
Camp  Merritt  was  that  conducted  by  Merritt  Hall,  the  en- 
listed men's  club.  This  fine  structure,  with  its  furnishings,  was 
the  gift  of  Mrs.  Wesley  Merritt  in  memory  of  her  late  hus- 
band. General  Merritt,  after  whom  the  camp  was  named.  The 
building's  low  ceilings  and  comfortable  furnishings  gave  it  a 
snug,  homelike  atmosphere.  The  camp  chaplain  operated  the 
club.  In  it  the  American  Library  Association  established  a 
camp  library  of  over  20,000  volumes,  the  shelves  of  which 
lined  a  large,  sumptuous  room  equipped  with  easy  chairs, 
broad  tables,  numerous  reading  lamps,  and  a  great  fireplace 
that  blazed  hearteningly  in  cool  or  cold  weather.  In  the  club 
one  could  buy  refreshments,  stationery,  stamps,  and  other 
small  accessories.  Within  the  building  were  a  large  cafeteria, 
a  billiard  room  with  eighteen  tables,  reception  rooms  and 
parlors,  and — a  most  popular  installation — a  modem  soda- 
fountain.  Did  the  men  appreciate  the  club  and  take  full  ad- 
vantage of  it"?  The  hardwood  threshold  at  the  front  door  was 
worn  completely  through  and  replaced  three  times. 

These  two  institutions,  the  Hostess  House  and  the  enlisted 
men's  club,  Merritt  Hall,  were  typical  in  scale  of  much  other 
welfare  work  at  Camp  Merritt.  The  American  Red  Cross 
found  the  embarkation  camps  convenient  for  the  issue  to  our 
troops  of  the  garments  made  for  their  comfort  by  the  women 
of  America.  At  Camp  Merritt  the  Red  Cross  built  several 
structures,  including  a  headquarters  building  and  a  convales- 
cent house.  The  volume  of  supplies  given  out  by  the  Red 
Cross  is  indicated  by  such  items  as  approximately  105,000 
sweaters,  110,000  knitted  helmets,  80,000  mufflers,  and 
150,000  pairs  of  socks. 

In  Camp  Merritt  was  also  the  Officers'  Club,  a  gift  through 
the  Red  Cross  of  Mr.  Cleveland  H.  Dodge.  This  structure, 
built  at  a  cost  of  $43,000,  was  an  important  adjunct  to  the 


i82  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

camp  equipment,  for  it  furnished  hotel  accommodations  at 
cost  to  diousands  of  overseas  officers  awaiting  embarkation  at 
Camp  Merritt.  The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  main- 
tained five  buildings  in  the  camp  and  a  large  force  of  secre- 
taries to  assist  in  their  operation.  The  War  Camp  Community 
Service  was  also  active ;  and  so  were  many  other  organizations, 
including  the  Knights  of  Columbus,  the  Jewish  Welfare 
Board,  and  the  a  Kempis  Society,  an  organization  of  Catholic 
women  which  maintained  a  visitors'  house  at  the  camp 
entrance. 

Camp  Merritt  has  played  to  the  end  its  part  in  the  World 
War.  The  last  divisional  troops  have  passed  through  the  camp 
in  demobilization.  Yet,  come  what  may,  the  camp  is  not  to 
disappear  utterly.  The  leased  site  will  not  all  be  turned  back 
to  the  owners.  Merritt  is  to  remain  a  historic  spot.  The  citizens 
of  Bergen  County,  New  Jersey,  have  purchased,  at  the  main 
street-crossing  within  the  camp,  a  circle  of  ground.  This  is  to  be 
dedicated  to  posterity  as  a  public  park;  and  in  the  center  of  it 
will  rise  a  monument,  to  which  in  future  years  the  half  million 
or  more  veterans  of  the  World  War  who  remember  Camp 
Merritt  fondly  may  return,  to  revive  again  in  memory  the  days 
when  they  reached  the  port  and  set  their  faces  toward  France. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
IN  CAMP  MERRITT 

IN  days  before  the  World  War  came  to  upset  the  accus- 
tomed plan  of  life,  one  of  the  popular  American  insti- 
tutions was  the  personally  conducted  tour  to  the  Holy 
Land  or  to  some  other  foreign  clime  attractive  to  the  sight- 
seer. The  personally  conducted  tour  was  bom  as  an  insti- 
tution about  the  time  when  the  Steamship  Great  Eastern 
was  the  marvel  of  the  world,  and  it  continued  to  flourish  and 
to  put  red-letter  summers  into  the  lives  of  school  teachers,  col- 
lege professors,  country  bankers,  and  inland  doctors  and  phi- 
losophers until  the  Year  of  Grace  1914,  when  certain  events 
in  Europe  combined  to  place  foreign  travel  among  the  hazard- 
ous occupations.  Since  then  and  until  almost  the  present  day, 
personally  conducted  touring  has  suffered  a  complete  hiatus, 
although,  as  the  hordes  of  Americans  flock  to  see  the  battle 
fields  of  France,  there  are  indications  that  the  custom  is  about 
to  be  renewed,  and  on  a  scale  which  will  make  all  such  former 
excursions  appear  as  mere  trickles  of  humanity. 

To  join  such  an  entourage,  one  had  only  to  answer  the  ad- 
vertisement, send  on  his  lump-sum  appropriation,  and  report 
at  the  dock  at  the  appointed  hour;  and  thereafter  he  was 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  touring  agency,  which  supplied 
quarters  to  him  aboard  the  specially  chartered  steamer,  ar- 
ranged for  his  meals  and  hotel  accommodations  on  the  other 
side,  looked  after  his  baggage  and  found  it  if  it  went  astray, 
procured  guides,  supplied  overland  conveyance  wherever  it  was 
needed,  protected  the  traveler,  shepherded  him  hour  by  sched- 
uled hour  over  the  rigid  route  which  he  had  paid  to  follow,  and 
finally  delivered  him  at  the  promised  minute  back  upon  his 


i84  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

native  shore.  During  all  this  time  the  tourist  was  completely 
divorced  from  the  ordinary  vexations  of  travel ;  he  needed  only 
to  keep  eyes  and  ears  open  and  drink  in  experience. 

Now  the  Transportation  Service  aimed  to  be  to  the  Army 
what  Mr.  Cook's  admirable  organization  is  to  the  amateur 
globe-trotter.  How  well  it  succeeded,  these  pages  are  designed 
to  show.  But  the  Service  went  even  further.  Certain  of  its 
activities  at  Camp  Merritt  and  the  other  embarkation  camps 
were  much  beyond  the  province  of  the  mere  travel  bureau. 
Let  us  see. 

Suppose  that  when  the  expectant  tourist  reached  the  steamer 
pier  and  prepared  to  go  aboard,  the  gentlemanly  conductor 
took  him  aside  and  addressed  to  him  words  such  as  these: 
"Oh,  my  dear  sir  I  You  are  not  at  all  properly  dressed  for  our 
expedition.  That  suit  you  have  on  may  be  comfortable  in  this 
climate,  but  it  is  not  the  thing  for  where  we  are  going.  Just 
step  with  me  into  our  equipment  room  here  and  let  me  make 
a  selection  for  you.  Now,  here  is  the  latest  creation  in  tropical 
wear — the  ultimate  in  coolness,  yet  of  a  sturdiness  to  with- 
stand the  wrinkling  and  hard  usage  of  travel.  And  that  hat! 
It  will  never  do.  Here  is  a  cap  for  steamer  wear;  here  a  cork 
helmet,  with  neckshade,  for  use  on  the  burning  Syrian  desert. 
I  see  you  have  no  sun-umbrella.  Here  is  a  serviceable  one.  We 
stop  for  six  hours  at  the  island  of  Corfu;  there  are  said  to  be 
brigands  there.  This  pistol  is  issued  to  you  for  your  protection." 
And  so  on,  ad  lib.  Surely  the  traveler  would  think  that  this 
was  the  ultimate  refinement  in  personal  conducting. 

Well,  it  was  precisely  what  the  Transportation  Service  did 
for  the  Army.  The  Service  attended  completely  to  the  Army's 
travel,  and  in  addition  it  saw  to  it  that  the  Army  was  properly 
dressed  and  equipped  for  the  service  which  it  was  to  perform 
at  its  overseas  destination.  Such  an  evolution  came  about  nat- 
urally enough.  The  embarkation  camps  were  virtually  turn- 
stiles through  which  the  entire  overseas  force  had  to  pass  man 
by  man.  Where,  if  not  here,  was  the  War  Department  to 
verify  the  uniformity  and  adequacy  of  its  Army's  equipment*? 
The  duty  of  making  this  verification  fell  to  the  Transportation 


IN  CAMP  MERRITT  185 

Service,  the  organization  which  was  on  the  ground.  A  corollary 
of  inspection  of  this  sort  is  the  issue  of  new  supplies  in  place 
of  those  condemned;  therefore  the  Embarkation  Service,  over 
and  above  its  transportation  duties,  came  to  be  a  great  supply 
agency,  and  its  embarkation  camps  became  supply  centers.  In 
addition  to  ordnance  and  quartermaster  goods  of  the  familiar 
sort,  issued  to  take  the  place  of  those  rejected  in  the  port 
inspections,  the  embarkation  camps  furnished  to  the  departing 
hosts  those  new  and  novel  articles  which  belonged  exclusively 
within  the  overseas  equipment — the  spiral  puttees,  the  steel 
helmets,  the  gas  masks,  the  trench  knives,  the  entrenching  kits, 
Sam  Browne  belts  for  officers,  and  other  articles,  all  of  which 
our  overseas  soldiers  saw  for  the  first  time  after  they  reached 
the  ports.  The  issue  of  supplies  to  soldiers  became,  then,  one 
of  the  principal  activities  at  each  embarkation  camp. 

The  Army  did  not  rely  upon  its  field  commanders  for  that 
uniformity  in  equipment  which  the  A.  E.  F.  exhibited  when  it 
debarked  in  France.  Ostensibly,  the  war  department  regu- 
lations required  the  correct  equipping  of  units  before  they  left 
their  training  camps  for  the  ports, — in  fact,  the  sailing  orders 
which  went  out  from  the  Embarkation  Service  specified  just 
what  equipment  each  soldier  should  have, — but  these  regula- 
tions were  intended  only  to  remove  some  of  the  burden  from 
the  supply  depots  at  the  port  camps.  The  forces  scattered 
throughout  the  United  States  proved  to  be  unable  to  equip 
themselves  according  to  regulation.  Some  of  the  commanding 
officers  at  the  interior  camps  were  careless.  Others  were  so 
engrossed  in  purely  tactical  duties  that  they  could  not  spare 
the  attention  which  the  equipment  required.  Still  others,  com- 
pelled to  leave  camp  on  short  notice,  could  not  obtain  the 
necessary  supplies  in  time.  Moreover,  the  regulations  were 
continually  changing.  The  growing  experience  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
command  was  constantly  reflected  in  its  cabled  additions  to 
and  emendations  of  the  specifications  for  overseas  equipment. 
The  busy  field  officer  in  this  country  could  not  reasonably  be 
expected  to  keep  up  with  this  incidental  development.  The 
scientific  arrangement  was  to  let  the  field  commanders  do  the 


i86  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

best  they  could,  and  to  create  at  the  ports  a  compact  inspection 
and  supply  service  which  could  put  into  instant  effect  any 
change  in  the  equipping  regulations. 

The  embarkation-camp  supply  service  became  exceedingly 
skillful  in  its  work.  One  of  its  inspectors  could  glance  at  a 
soldier  and  tell  wherein  his  clothing  and  equipment  were  defi- 
cient or  excessive.  A  few  seconds'  appraisal  of  the  contents  of 
knapsack  and  kit  was  sufficient.  Moreover,  the  inspections  were 
conducted  right  in  the  issuing  warehouses,  with  the  necessary 
supplies  at  the  inspector's  elbow.  Red  tape  was  cut.  Substi- 
tute supplies  were  issued  on  the  spot  forthwith,  and  the  lines 
of  soldiers  filed  through  the  buildings  almost  without  halting. 

Often  an  outsider  might  have  been  puzzled  by  the  quality  of 
the  garments  discarded  in  this  final  inspection.  The  rejected 
clothing  sometimes  seemed  as  good  as  new.  But  the  inspector 
was  constantly  influenced  by  a  consideration  that  entered  into 
so  many  supply  questions  in  1918:  the  inveterate  necessity  of 
saving  ship  space.  If  a  soldier  took  to  France  a  uniform  which 
would  not  give  him  practically  100-per-cent  wear,  he  would 
call  for  a  new  uniform  sooner,  and  the  replacement  uniform 
would  have  to  cross  the  ocean  in  a  cargo  hold,  taking  up  its 
bit  of  the  sorely  needed  room.  Better  to  send  the  new  uniform 
on  the  soldier's  back  in  the  first  place — such  was  the  law  of 
the  port.  Clothing  discarded  at  the  embarkation  camps  went 
through  salvage,  eventually  to  be  reissued,  but  it  never  crossed 
the  ocean.  We  sent  only  new  clothing  to  the  A.  E.  F. 

The  quartermaster  department  of  Camp  Merritt  grew  from 
a  small  beginning.  At  first  its  personnel  numbered  only  a  few 
officers  and  enlisted  men.  In  the  summer  of  1918,  when  the 
embarkation  movement  was  at  its  height,  the  Camp  Merritt 
quartermaster  supply  enterprise  gave  occupation  to  nearly 
2,500  officers  and  men,  who  constituted  more  than  half  the 
post's  permanent  garrison.  These  troops  occupied  an  entire 
block  of  the  camp.  Camp  Merritt  was  then  easily  the  foremost 
quartermaster  post  in  the  United  States.  A  score  or  more  of 
quartermaster  warehouses  testified  to  the  magnitude  of  the 
undertaking. 


IN  CAMP  MERRITT  187 

It  was  in  vain  that  the  quartermaster  organization  at  Camp 
Merritt  besought  the  port  authorities  for  more  time  in  which 
to  inspect  and  reclothe  the  overseas  soldiers.  The  officers  asked 
that  incoming  organizations  be  allowed  to  remain  in  camp  at 
least  three  days  before  being  called  to  the  piers.  Such  waits 
were  often  out  of  the  question.  The  fleets  of  army  transports 
and  allied  transports  at  our  disposal  had  grown  to  such  pro- 
portions that  convoys  were  sailing  almost  daily,  and  hungry 
piers  were  devouring  troops  as  fast  as  railroads  could  haul 
them  in.  The  average  stay  at  the  embarkation  camp  became, 
during  July  and  August,  1918,  twenty-four  hours  or  less. 
Troops  were  dispatched  from  Camp  Merritt  at  the  rate  of 
4,000  a  day.  The  camp's  constant  population  of  more  than 
35,000  transient  troops  changed  completely  at  least  three  times 
every  month.  The  arrival  of  any  large  contingent  of  troops  at 
Camp  Merritt  meant  for  the  supply  companies  a  stretch  of 
work  that  often  ran  thirty-six  hours  without  a  break.  During 
this  activity  there  was  no  sleep  for  anybody ;  the  supply  troops 
scarcely  paused  to  snatch  hasty  meals. 

The  inspection  of  clothing  was  rigorous.  If  a  uniform 
showed  that  it  had  already  given  more  than  a  third  of  its 
normal  wear,  it  was  rejected,  and  the  supply  service  passed 
out  a  new  uniform  to  the  soldier  and  ordered  him  to  turn  in 
his  old  one.  So  with  shoes;  so  with  shirts  and  underwear.  The 
inspection  extended  to  the  soldier's  reserve  supply  of  garments 
in  his  barrack  bag.  Every  article  of  apparel  had  to  measure 
up  to  the  requirement — less  than  30  per  cent  of  a  theoretical 
100  per  cent  of  wear.  The  inspectors  used  numerous  tests  of 
their  own  to  determine  the  degree  of  a  garment's  deteriora- 
tion. The  camp  inspection  condemned  all  campaign  hats  and 
canvas  leggins  of  domestic  issue,  regardless  of  their  condition, 
and  substituted  the  overseas  caps  and  woolen  puttees. 

To  thousands  of  overseas  men  in  the  busy  months  of  July 
and  August,  1918,  Camp  Merritt  was  a  rest  camp  in  name 
only.  Many  of  these  men  never  saw  the  interior  of  the  camp 
barracks.  The  convoys  were  in  port  awaiting  their  loads,  and 
the  port  reservoirs  of  overseas  troops  had  dwindled  to  nothing. 


i88  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

At  such  times  the  reception  committee  at  the  railroad  station 
escorted  the  troops  directly  to  the  warehouse  section  of  the 
camp.  There  they  received  their  new  supplies  and  donned  them 
as  they  passed  through.  Then  out  of  camp  they  marched,  and 
down  the  road  to  the  ferry  landing  at  Alpine. 

Since  the  embarking  troops  usually  left  Camp  Merritt  be- 
tween one  o'clock  and  six  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  work  of 
issuing  supplies  to  soldiers  frequently  continued  until  long 
after  midnight.  If  the  incoming  troops  filled  the  issuing  ware- 
houses, the  work  of  supply  overflowed  upon  the  camp  streets 
near  by.  The  quartermaster  troops  loaded  great  motor  trucks 
with  clothing  and  stationed  them  at  intervals  along  the  street. 
Lined  up  at  the  curbs  were  files  of  men,  their  baggage  un- 
packed and  spread  out  upon  the  pavement  before  them.  Down 
the  lines  passed  the  inspectors.  If  a  pair  of  breeches  appeared 
to  be  worn,  the  inspector  grabbed  them  by  the  seat  and  gave 
a  mighty  jerk  that  told  whether  the  seams  were  strong. 
Other  tests  were  equally  rough-and-ready.  Supply  squads  ac- 
companying the  trucks  brought  out  new  garments  as  they  were 
needed,  and  the  soldiers  were  ordered  to  strip  where  they  were, 
regardless  of  the  temperature  or  the  hour,  and  put  on  the  new 
apparel.  Such  street  scenes  were  common  enough  in  Camp 
Merritt  during  the  summer  of  1918. 

Both  the  quartermaster  and  the  ordnance  depots  at  the  camp 
were  often  hard  put  to  it  to  procure  supplies  for  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  troops  whom  they  were  called  upon  to  equip. 
Often  the  long  warehouses  were  bare  of  numerous  necessities, 
such  was  the  heavy  drain  upon  them  of  the  unprecedented  rate 
of  embarkation.  But  somehow,  by  hook  or  crook,  the  camp  al- 
ways managed  to  get  what  was  needed.  If  the  freight  deliveries 
fell  down,  the  supply  officers  called  upon  the  express;  if  that 
were  too  slow,  they  brought  clothing  and  other  equipment  by 
motor  truck  directly  from  factories  or  from  the  supply  bases 
at  New  York.  They  became  desperate  men.  On  one  or  two 
occasions  they  located  shipments  of  supplies  en  route  to  other 
military  posts,  and  reached  out  and  diverted  these  consign- 
ments into  Camp  Merritt.  Month  after  month  they  fought  in 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

TRUCKS  UNLOADING  QUARTERMASTER  SUPPLIES  IN 
STREET,  CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  by   Signal   Cfrj'S 

TROOPS  DRAWING  SUPPLIES  IN  STREET,  CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

QUARTERMASTER  WAREHOUSE,  CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  b\    Sic/nal   Cor/i 


MOUNTAINS  OF  EMPTY  BOXES  SHOWING  TREMENDOUS 

ISSUE  OF  SUPPLIES  TO  OVERSEAS  UNITS  AT 

CAMP  iMERRITT 


IN  CAMP  MERRITT  189 

this  fashion  for  supplies,  and  they  always  got  them.  Not  a 
man  departed  from  Camp  Merritt  deficient  in  his  equipment, 
although,  of  the  570,000  who  passed  through  the  camp,  at 
least  half  required  new  clothing,  an  even  greater  fraction 
new  ordnance  equipment,  such  as  knapsacks  and  belts,  and 
every  single  man  such  novel  accessories  as  overseas  caps,  steel 
helmets,  trench  knives,  and  gas  masks. 

Late  one  afternoon  when  8,000  infantry  replacement  troops 
were  in  Camp  Merritt,  equipped  and  ready  to  start  for  the  piers 
that  night,  orders  came  that  thereafter  no  infantry  were  to 
embark  without  kits  of  entrenching  tools.  The  port  supply 
service  was  at  its  best  in  such  an  emergency.  At  the  time  of 
the  order  there  were  no  entrenching  kits  in  camp.  Less  than 
twelve  hours  later  the  8,000  soldiers  boarded  the  ferry-boats, 
every  man  with  a  kit.  The  tools  had  been  freighted  out  from 
the  city  on  motor  trucks.  In  one  respect  only  was  the  equip- 
ment below  inspection  par:  the  entrenching  spades  and  their 
handles  were  not  assembled  and  packed  in  the  canvas  covers. 
But  each  soldier  had  orders  to  attend  to  this  job  during  the 
two-hour  ride  down  the  river. 

The  ordnance  depot  at  Camp  Merritt  supplied  not  only 
personal  articles  to  the  troops,  but  also  a  considerable  amount 
of  the  ordnance  equipment  of  field  organizations.  It  was  at 
the  camp  that  many  divisions  met  for  the  first  time  the  Brown- 
ing machine  gun.  The  Camp  Merritt  ordnance  depot  also 
shipped  supplies  directly  overseas  to  the  A.  E.  F.  Among 
these  export  shipments  were  thousands  of  sets  of  artillery  har- 
ness. The  depot  eventually  came  to  be  a  concentration  point 
for  light  ordnance  supplies  of  many  sorts,  which  it  distributed 
to  training  camps  and  posts  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  country. 
The  depot  also  sold  to  officers  pistols  and  other  ordnance 
accessories. 

When  the  overseas  travel  was  at  its  peak,  the  embarkation 
camps  were  insufficient  to  accommodate  the  whole  movement, 
and  in  the  emergency  the  War  Department  utilized  some  of 
the  eastern  training  camps  as  temporary  embarkation  camps, 
sending  troops  from  them  directly  to  the  piers.  Camp  Meade 


190  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

was  so  used  when  the  Seventy-ninth  Division  moved  from  it 
to  the  Hoboken  water  front  in  two  days,  an  episode  already 
narrated.  Camp  Dix,  in  New  Jersey,  became  at  times  an 
emergency  embarkation  camp;  and  posts  as  far  outlying  as 
Camp  Devens  in  Massachusetts  and  Camp  Lee  in  Virginia 
served  on  occasions  in  the  same  capacity. 

Whenever  outlying  camps  were  used  in  embarkation,  the 
Port  sent  its  inspection  and  supply  officers  directly  to  them  to 
take  charge  of  equipping  the  troops.  Once  or  twice  there  was 
a  direct  shipment  of  troops  from  Camp  Lee  to  the  ships  at 
New  York.  In  each  of  these  instances  inspectors  and  supply 
officers  from  Camp  Merritt  went  to  Camp  Lee  in  advance 
of  the  movement.  They  saw  to  it  that  each  soldier,  when  he 
stepped  aboard  the  train  at  the  camp,  wore  new  or  practically 
new  clothing  and  carried  his  "tin  hat,"  gas  mask,  and  other 
paraphernalia  which  the  overseas  man  commonly  never  saw 
until  he  came  within  smelling  distance  of  salt  water.  The  same 
procedure  was  followed  at  Camp  Meade,  at  Camp  Dix,  or  at 
any  other  temporary  embarkation  camp. 

One  immediate  outgrowth  of  the  tremendous  supply  busi- 
ness at  Camp  Merritt  was  its  correlated  activity,  salvage.  The 
garments  and  articles  of  equipment  abandoned  by  the  overseas 
troops  still  had  much  wear  left  in  them.  No  interior  camp  re- 
claimed clothing  on  anything  like  the  scale  of  salvage  at  Camp 
Merritt.  At  the  camp  itself  there  was  a  large  reclamation  plant, 
including  a  shoe  repair  shop  and  power  mending-rooms.  But 
in  the  summer  of  1918  this  plant  was  buried  deep  under  dis- 
carded equipment,  and  it  became  necessary  for  the  camp  to 
send  reclaimable  shoes  and  apparel  to  many  contract  factories 
in  New  York,  as  well  as  to  army  salvage  plants  throughout 
the  East.  Camp  Merritt  operated  a  large  laundry  at  Hoboken. 
Before  the  armistice  this  laundry  had  washed  and  cleaned  more 
than  a  million  articles  of  clothing. 

The  reclamation  of  ordnance  material  was  also  an  extensive 
project.  The  ordnance  depot  at  Camp  Merritt  maintained  a 
repair  shop  in  which  armorers  restored  broken  rifles  and  pistols, 
other  men  mended  haversacks,  ration  bags,  and  similar  equip- 


IN  CAMP  MERRITT  191 

ment,  other  squads  repaired  and  cleaned  mess  pans  and  cups, 
knives,  forks,  and  spoons  by  the  hundred  thousand,  and  still 
others  reclaimed  entrenching  tools  and  bayonet  scabbards. 

The  ordnance  activities  at  Camp  Merritt  required  five  large 
warehouses  for  the  accommodation  of  supplies.  The  quarter- 
master depot  operated  eighteen  warehouses,  three  of  them  for 
the  issue  of  clothing,  shoes,  and  equipage,  one  for  the  exchange 
of  clothing  and  shoes,  two  for  receiving  and  shipping  Q.  M. 
supplies  of  all  sorts,  and  the  rest  for  storage.  Two  entire  stor- 
age warehouses  were  filled  with  shoes,  one  with  underclothing, 
three  with  uniforms  and  overcoats,  one  with  gloves,  one  with 
leggins  and  raincoats,  and  another  with  blankets.  Between 
October  11,  1918,  and  November  1 1,  the  busiest  month  of  all, 
the  camp  supply  service  issued  over  1,800,000  articles  of 
clothing  for  overseas  men. 

The  salvage  of  food  at  Camp  Merritt  was  extensive.  Or- 
ganizations moving  into  the  embarkation  camp  often  brought 
their  own  food  supplies  with  them.  Troops  traveling  on  the 
railroads  were  required  in  most  instances  to  feed  themselves 
en  route;  and  it  was  usual  for  an  organization,  on  starting 
out  from  its  training  camp,  to  supply  itself  with  subsistence 
not  only  for  the  rail  journey  to  the  port,  but  also  for  its  stay 
in  the  embarkation  camp.  Unaware  how  long  they  should  have 
to  remain  at  the  port,  some  of  these  organizations  greatly 
overstocked  their  messes.  But  no  food  except  the  emergency 
ration  was  carried  aboard  the  transports  (the  Navy  or  the 
foreign  steamship  companies  fed  our  soldiers  at  sea)  and  there- 
fore the  overseas  units  left  the  excess  food  supplies  in  their 
kitchens. 

When  an  organization  moved  out  of  Camp  Merritt  the  camp 
authorities  promptly  sent  men  to  the  vacated  barracks  to  put 
them  in  order  for  their  next  guests.  In  the  house-cleaning 
which  followed,  the  camp  troops  discovered  great  quantities 
of  stores,  principally  of  mess  stores  in  the  kitchens.  Tens  of 
thousands  of  pounds  of  meats,  fresh  or  preserved,  and  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  pounds  of  bread,  potatoes,  sugar,  soap, 
and  many  other  staples  were  taken  from  the  vacated  kitchens 


192  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

and  turned  in  for  salvage.  Nearly  all  of  this  was  saved.  Such 
of  it  as  could  not  be  used  currently  at  the  camp  was  placed  in 
storage  for  reissue  as  required. 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

TROOP  BAGGAGE  ARRIVING  AT  CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


SALVAGING  CLOTHING  DISCARDED  BY  EMBARKING 
TROOPS,  NEW  YORK 


Fhcto  by  Signal   Ccrfs 

OVERSEAS  TROOPS  ARRIVING  AT  CAMP  MERRITT 


From  An   Official  Motion  Picture 

EMERGENCY  RATION  TO  BE  CARRIED  ON  BOARD  SHIP 


CHAPTER  XV 
PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED 

PUTTING  troops  through  the  embarkation  camp  and 
aboard  their  ships  in  good  order  and  with  due  atten- 
tion to  the  government  records  was  an  intricate  business. 
The  celebrated  one-armed  paper  hanger  and  his  equally  assidu- 
ous confrere,  the  cranberry  merchant,  were  gentlemen  of 
leisure  compared  with  the  commanding  officer  of  a  large  body 
of  overseas  troops  from  the  time  he  stepped  on  his  train  at 
the  cantonment  until  he  settled  down  with  a  sigh  in  his  trans- 
port stateroom,  ready  at  last  to  let  somebody  else  do  the 
worrying.  Suppose  we  glance  at  a  few  of  the  manifold  duties 
which  destroyed  his  reputation  for  geniality. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  the  matter  of  baggage — not  the 
personal  baggage  of  the  soldiers,  for  they  carried  that  in  their 
hands  and  on  their  backs,  but  the  property  of  the  organiza- 
tion. There  were  its  animals,  horses  and  mules;  its  field 
kitchens  and  mess  equipment;  its  tentage;  its  trucks,  camions, 
carts,  automobiles,  motor  cycles,  and  bicycles;  its  headquar- 
ters equipment  of  filing  cases,  typewriters,  paper  records,  and 
the  like;  the  trunks  of  its  officers;  its  machine  guns,  often  its 
artillery;  its  field  telephone  sets  and  other  signaling  equip- 
ment— to  name  only  some  of  the  things  that  had  to  be  taken 
along.  In  the  early  months,  organizations  carried  the  apparatus 
for  their  own  entertainment,  cleaving  even  to  such  items  as 
pianos  and  billiard  tables.  And  you  could  be  sure  that,  in 
outrageous  contravention  of  the  orders  in  such  cases  made  and 
provided,  the  men  of  the  companies  would  manage  to  slip 
into  the  consignment  sundry  dogs,  goats,  and  other  mascots 
in  whose  mediatory  powers  they  trusted.  It  may  be  whispered 
by  the  way  that  the  transportation  officers  often  developed  a 


194  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

strategic  blindness  when  such  contraband  cargo  was  being 
loaded. 

All  these  impedimenta  had  to  be  packed  according  to  one 
set  of  regulations  and  painted  and  marked  according  to 
another.  They  had  to  be  billed  through  in  correct  form  to 
designated  terminals — artillery  to  Newport  News,  trucks  and 
other  heavy  equipment  to  the  freight  piers  in  Brooklyn  or 
Newark,  trunks,  clothing,  bed  rolls,  and  other  checkable  bag- 
gage to  the  passenger  piers  in  North  River,  records  and  head- 
quarters office  equipment  to  the  embarkation  camp,  and  so  on. 
If  any  of  the  baggage  were  lost  on  the  way  to  port — and  with 
the  innate  perversity  of  luggage,  some  of  it  was  tolerably  sure 
to  go  astray — it  had  to  be  located  and  brought  in,  and  in  a 
hurry,  too. 

A  pretty  problem,  this  matter  of  handling  organization 
baggage  and  freight  en  route.  An  even  prettier  one  for  the 
stevedores  at  the  port ;  for  the  shipment  together  of  nondescript 
impedimenta — tons  and  tons  of  it,  with  any  large  organization 
of  troops — made  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  the  balanced  and 
economical  lading  of  vessels.  Moreover,  as  often  as  not  the 
organization  and  its  heavy  equipment  failed  to  come  together 
at  the  debarkation  port  in  France;  some  divisions  in  the 
Expeditionary  Forces  never  did  recover  the  freight  on  which 
they  had  expended  so  much  effort  prior  to  embarkation.  For 
almost  as  long  as  we  had  had  an  Army,  it  had  been  entrenched 
in  army  tradition  and  custom  that  a  military  organization  must 
carry  its  freight  with  it  wherever  it  went.  But  under  the  exigen- 
cies of  1918  and  the  incessant  hammering  of  the  embarkation 
forces,  that  particular  tradition  finally  crashed  to  the  ground. 
There  finally  went  forth  the  revolutionary  order  that  units 
setting  out  for  France  should  take  with  them  only  their  per- 
sonal belongings  and  their  business  records,  and  that  all  the 
field  and  camp  equipment  required  in  France  should  be  fur- 
nished them  upon  arrival,  from  the  bases  and  warehouses  of 
the  A.  E.  F.  Services  of  Supply. 

Thus,  with  one  stroke  of  the  pen,  the  War  Department 
thrust  aside  this  traditional  lumber  that  was  cluttering  our 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  195 

overseas  transportation.  The  innovation  instantly  removed 
from  the  shoulders  of  the  commanding  officer  of  field  troops 
the  burdensome  detail  of  looking  out  for  much  freight  and  bag- 
gage en  route;  it  saved  him  the  vexation  of  losing  his  organi- 
zation's possessions  entirely;  and,  above  all,  it  made  possible 
the  shipment  of  divisional  materiel  to  France  in  bulk,  to  the 
great  conservation  of  vessel  space  and  the  equally  great  sim- 
plifying of  expeditionary  embarkation,  for  now  the  shipment 
of  men  and  that  of  property  could  be  handled  as  separate 
tasks.  The  change  came  too  late  in  the  game  (only  a  few  weeks 
before  the  armistice)  to  cut  much  figure  in  our  transportation 
history,  but  its  marked  advantages  would  have  been  evident 
in  another  year  of  fighting. 

The  transportation  of  baggage  was  only  one  of  the  embark- 
ing commander's  cares.  He  was  confronted  with  an  appalling 
volume  of  work  after  he  reached  the  embarkation  camp.  He 
had  to  make  up  strength  lists  of  the  units  under  his  personal 
command,  see  that  they  obtained  their  assignments  to  quarters 
aboard  transports,  work  out  the  passenger  lists  for  each  vessel 
occupied  by  his  troops,  compile  and  bring  up  to  date  the  service 
records  of  every  single  man  in  the  command,  ascertain  that  the 
necessary  inspections  were  carried  through,  keep  an  eye  upon 
the  supplying  of  his  men  with  overseas  clothing  and  equip- 
ment, put  in  force  the  police  regulations  designed  to  prevent 
the  escape  of  information  to  the  enemy,  send  on  advance 
parties  to  occupy  the  transports,  detail  troops  to  clean  up  and 
bring  along  essential  property  overlooked  in  evacuation  of 
the  quarters  in  the  embarkation  camp,  report  to  the  port  com- 
mander, formally  visit  the  camp  commander  and  the  com- 
mander of  the  transport  which  was  to  carry  him  across,  super- 
vise the  movement  of  his  command  from  the  embarkation  camp 
to  the  piers,  superintend  proceedings  on  the  piers,  turn  over  to 
the  Port  the  service  records  of  deserters,  men  absent  without 
leave,  and  men  taken  sick  or  rejected  for  physical  disability  at 
the  last  moment,  do  half  a  hundred  other  required  things — and 
attend  to  all  of  them  within,  sometimes,  a  few  hours.  To  be 
sure,  the  commanding  officer  was  surrounded  with  aides  and 


196  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

assistants  who  looked  after  the  details;  but  the  final  respon- 
sibility was  upon  him  alone.  There  was  a  current  impression 
that  the  C.  O.  was  likely  to  be  a  bit  irascible  during  embar- 
kation time. 

The  War  Department  did  not  expect  the  field  commander 
to  know  how  to  clothe  and  equip  his  men  for  foreign  service, 
and  no  more  did  the  Embarkation  Service  expect  him  to 
become  learned  in  the  technique  of  embarkation.  In  point  of 
time,  embarkation  was,  after  all,  but  a  slight  incident  in  the 
career  of  the  overseas  unit  in  1918;  and  it  occurred  only  once 
in  that  career.  Yet  the  details  of  embarkation  were  myriad 
and  devious.  Left  to  himself  (as  in  our  previous  overseas 
expedition),  the  commander  at  best  could  only  have  floundered 
through  the  procedure  of  going  aboard  ship;  at  the  worst,  an 
undirected  embarkation  would  have  resulted  in  a  fearful  con- 
fusion. Accordingly,  the  official  travel  bureau — that  same 
transportation  organization  which  had  already  made  smooth 
the  trip  to  the  port  and  was  now  about  to  clothe  the  command- 
ing officer's  men  in  correct  garments  and  hang  at  their  belts  or 
harness  to  their  shoulders  each  item  of  the  regulation  equip- 
ment— again  stepped  forward  and,  all  through  this  trying 
time,  stood  at  the  commander's  elbow,  his  mentor,  guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend. 

The  Port  set  forth  on  paper  a  detailed  system  covering  every 
step  of  the  progress  of  an  organization  from  the  moment  it 
detrained  at  the  embarkation  camp  until  its  last  man  had 
boarded  ship  and  the  transports  had  cast  off  their  lines  and 
backed  out  into  the  stream.  This  was  printed  in  small  type, 
with  plenty  of  bold-face  emphasis,  upon  thirty-six  pages 
bound  into  a  booklet  entitled  Embarkation  Regulations.  The 
Port  placed  a  copy  of  this  pamphlet  in  the  hands  of  every 
overseas  commander  a  few  days  before  he  took  train  for  the 
seaboard.  It  expected  him,  through  perusal  of  the  regulations, 
to  become  familiar  with,  though  not  adept  in,  the  procedure 
at  port.  No  doubt  they  dismayed  him,  these  formidable  re- 
quirements. But  he  need  not  have  worried:  experience  had 
built  up  in  Camp  Merritt,  and  in  the  other  embarkation  camps 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  197 

as  well,  expert  corps  ready  themselves  to  attend  to  the  more 
technical  preparations.  The  camp  administration  soon  dis- 
covered, in  fact,  that  the  transient  organizations  could  not 
prepare  their  sailing  records  and  attend  to  other  embarkation 
details  with  uniformity;  whereupon  the  permanent  command 
at  Merritt  took  these  responsibilities  into  its  own  hands.  It 
came  to  pass  eventually  that  about  all  the  visiting  commander 
had  to  do  was  to  stay  by  and  sign  his  name  on  the  dotted  lines. 

In  some  of  the  Latin  countries,  where  they  make  more  of  an 
art  of  courtesy  than  we  do,  there  is  an  official  of  the  govern- 
ment, a  sort  of  assistant  to  the  foreign  minister,  who  goes  by 
the  rather  awkward  title  of  Introducer  of  Ambassadors.  It  is 
his  duty  to  meet  the  distinguished  guests  of  the  nation  at  the 
border,  see  to  their  comfort  and  entertainment,  pilot  them 
safely  through  the  rocks  and  shoals  of  official  etiquette,  and 
eventually  bid  them  Godspeed  as  they  depart.  Camp  Merritt 
had  its  official  "introducer,"  except  that,  instead  of  one  of 
him,  there  were  several,  all  attached  to  an  important  branch 
of  the  camp  command.  They  were  the  camp  liaison  officers. 

The  Commander  of  the  Port  fixed  the  date  for  the  arrival 
at  New  York  of  an  overseas  organization.  At  the  same  time 
he  sent  to  the  embarkation  camps  a  copy  of  the  order.  If  the 
organization  were  assigned  to  Camp  Merritt,  the  liaison  office 
of  that  camp  at  once  took  cognizance  of  the  fact.  It  attached 
one  of  its  liaison  officers  to  the  organization,  and  it  was  to  be 
his  exclusive  care  during  its  time  in  the  camp.  He  was  expected 
to  follow  the  inbound  travel  of  the  organization  by  means 
of  information  which  he  was  able  to  obtain  from  the  Camp 
Merritt  agent  of  the  troop-movement  office,  and  thus  to  ascer- 
tain the  exact  hour  and  minute  of  its  arrival.  Meanwhile  he 
inspected  the  camp  quarters  assigned  to  the  organization  and 
had  them  made  tidy.  When  the  headquarters  train  pulled  into 
the  camp  station,  the  liaison  officer  was  there  to  greet  the  com- 
mander. He  escorted  him  to  the  quarters  which  he  was  to 
occupy  in  camp  and  showed  him  the  sections  to  be  occupied  by 
his  organization.  He  accompanied  the  visitor  to  headquarters 
and   introduced   him   to   the   camp   commander.   Thereafter, 


198  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

throughout  the  stay  of  the  organization  in  Camp  Merritt,  the 
liaison  officer  called  upon  the  troop  commander  at  least  twice 
every  day,  smoothed  out  his  difficulties,  put  him  in  touch  with 
the  various  camp  activities,  saw  to  it  that  the  camp  organiza- 
tion was  not  neglecting  him  in  any  way,  and  in  general  made 
the  visit  of  the  commander  as  pleasant  as  he  could. 

One  of  the  extremely  important  duties  of  the  commander 
of  an  overseas  unit  resting  in  Camp  Merritt  was  to  compile 
the  service  records  of  all  the  soldiers  to  be  embarked.  The 
Embarkation  Service  made  it  an  inflexible  rule  that  no  man 
could  go  on  board  a  ship  unless  his  paper  record  was  complete. 
For  each  soldier  there  had  to  be  a  minimum  of  eight  cards  and 
records;  there  might  be  as  many  as  twelve.  The  eight  required 
cards  and  records  were  as  follows : 

(1)  The  soldier's  service  record,  showing  the  organizations  with 
which  he  had  served  from  the  date  of  his  entrance  into  the  military 
service ; 

(2)  His  individual  equipment  record,  showing  what  supplies  had 
been  issued  to  him; 

(3)  His  pay  card,  showing  what  money  had  been  paid  him  by  the 
Government ; 

(4)  A  record  of  his  pay  allotments; 

(5)  His  application  for  War  Risk  Insurance,  or  his  waiver  of  it; 

(6)  His  qualification  card,  showing  his  individual  assets  in  technical 
skill  and  mental  characteristics ; 

(7)  His  so-called  "locator  card,"  giving  his  name,  his  army  serial 
number,  his  rank,  and  the  organization  in  which  he  served;  and 

(8)  A  card  showing  his  sick  and  hospital  record. 

Additional  documents  might  show  a  court-martial  record,  or 
certify  scores  made  on  the  rifle-  or  pistol-ranges. 

At  this  point  we  seem  to  hear  the  reader  snort  disgustedly, 
"Red  tape!"  Red  tape,  yes;  but  red  tape  without  which  the 
efficient  management  of  a  great  army  would  be  impossible. 
In  1918  the  Army  was  spending  money  by  billions  of  dollars, 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  officers  had  the  handling  of  these 
funds.  Without  the  system  of  checks  and  balances  which  the 
public  knows  as  red  tape,  there  could  have  been  no  assurance 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  199 

that  fraud  and  graft  would  not  run  riot.  Unfortunately, 
humanity  is  frail  before  temptation.  The  elaborate  paper  work 
of  the  Army  was  performed  largely  to  guard  against  losses 
of  public  money  through  unfaithful  stewards.  Take,  as  an 
instance,  the  individual  soldier's  pay  card.  Without  the  insti- 
tution of  the  pay  card,  the  opportunities  for  pilfering  from 
the  public  treasury  would  be  enormous.  Let  the  critic  put 
himself  in  the  place  of  a  disbursing  officer.  Would  he  pay  out 
money  to  a  soldier  who  possessed  no  pay  card,  knowing  that, 
if  the  man  had  no  right  to  the  money,  he,  the  payer,  would  be 
held  personally  accountable  for  it'?  If  a  soldier  asserted  that 
the  Government  owed  him  money,  his  pay  card  was  prima 
facie  e"C^idence  as  to  the  truth  of  his  claim. 

The  soldier's  service  record  was  his  military  pedigree.  The 
military  authorities  were  accountable  to  the  American  people 
for  every  one  of  the  millions  of  boys  in  the  Army.  The  service 
records  were  the  Army's  means  of  keeping  track  of  its  indi- 
vidual members.  In  the  transition  from  America  to  France 
there  was  endless  opportunity  for  men  to  become  lost  from 
their  organizations.  The  insistence  of  the  Embarkation  Ser- 
vice that  no  man  should  sail  unless  his  paper  record  was  com- 
plete was  the  Army's  best  safeguard  against  losing  track  of 
its  members.  The  soldier-member  of  a  traveling  unit  did  not 
carry  his  record  on  his  person;  it  was  filed,  with  those  of  his 
comrades,  in  custody  of  the  unit's  adjutant.  If  for  any  reason 
the  soldier  were  detached  from  the  command,  it  then  became 
the  duty  of  headquarters  either  to  hand  him  his  record  or  to 
forward  it  to  the  organization  which  he  was  to  join.  The 
Embarkation  Service  required  these  records  to  be  instantly 
available  on  the  piers,  and  even  aboard  ship  until  the  vessels 
had  left  the  docks.  It  might  be,  and  often  was,  necessary  to 
take  a  man  off  a  ship  at  the  last  moment.  With  the  company 
files  at  hand  and  open,  the  ship  did  not  need  to  be  held  while 
a  hunt  was  instituted  for  the  man's  service  record.  A  service 
record  for  every  man  embarked,  and  no  service  record  taken 
overseas  without  a  man  to  show  for  it — such  was  the  rule  at 
the  port. 


200  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

The  compilation  of  service  records,  however,  gave  little 
trouble  to  a  well-administered  organization  whose  records  were 
kept  up  to  the  mark  at  all  times.  To  such  a  unit  the  work  at  the 
port  became  merely  a  check  for  accuracy.  A  more  laborious 
duty  was  that  of  making  up  the  so-called  "assignment  list" 
of  troops  ready  for  sailing.  This  list  named  all  the  units  of 
the  organization  to  go,  specified  the  character  of  each  (infantry 
company,  ambulance  company,  supply  company,  or  what  not), 
and  gave  the  number  of  men  in  each  unit.  The  prime  requisite 
for  this  list  was  accuracy,  for  passenger  space  on  the  trans- 
ports was  figured  down  to  the  individual  soldier.  Upon  this 
list  the  port  officers  based  the  assignment  of  ship-quarters  to 
the  organization. 

Each  organization  prepared  three  passenger  lists:  one  for 
commissioned  officers,  field  clerks,  nurses,  and  civilian  em- 
ployees of  the  Army,  another  for  non-commissioned  officers, 
and  a  third  for  enlisted  men.  Officers  were  arranged  on  the 
list  by  consecutive  numbers,  according  to  rank.  No,  l  being 
the  ranking  officer  to  embark  on  that  particular  ship.  The 
pleasantest  quarters  aboard  the  transport  fell,  naturally,  to 
those  of  highest  rank.  Non-commissioned  officers  were  arranged 
on  their  list  according  to  grade  and  likewise  numbered  con- 
secutively. Enlisted  men,  however,  were  arranged  in  the  pas- 
senger lists  by  squads,  on  the  basis  of  the  usual  company  for- 
mation; and  thereby  hangs  an  interesting  tale. 

At  the  outset  the  enlisted  men  were  arranged  alphabetically 
on  the  passenger  lists.  The  checking  officers  at  the  gangplanks 
put  the  men  aboard  individually.  When  a  name  was  called,  the 
bearer  of  it  stepped  forward  and  repeated  it  distinctly.  The 
embarkation  officer  then  turned  to  the  company  commander, 
who  stood  just  behind  him,  and  requested  the  man's  service 
records.  These  were  taken  from  the  files,  which  had  been 
brought  to  the  foot  of  the  gangplank.  The  embarkation  officer 
then  checked  the  soldier  against  his  record  and  passed  him 
through.  Now,  in  however  good  formation  a  company  might 
approach  the  gangplank,  when  men  were  called  out  under  this 
alphabetical  system  the  formation  was  soon  torn  to  pieces,  and 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  201 

confusion  ensued.  In  fact,  the  disorder  was  so  unmanageable 
at  times  during  the  early  months  of  embarkation  that  several 
wives  of  enlisted  men  and  non-commissioned  officers,  having 
somehow  gained  entrance  to  the  pier,  managed  to  slip  on 
board  the  vessels  while  the  attention  of  the  embarkation  offi- 
cers was  directed  elsewhere,  and  actually  accompanied  their 
husbands  to  France.  Moreover,  the  alphabetical  system  pro- 
duced a  slight  delay  just  after  each  man  had  stepped  forward, 
while  his  officer  was  searching  through  the  index  for  his  service 
record. 

It  was  for  these  reasons  that  the  system  was  changed.  The 
men  were  arranged  on  the  passenger  lists  according  to  com- 
pany formation,  No.  1  on  the  list  being  the  first  man  in  the 
first  squad.  What  was  equally  important,  the  company's  ser- 
vice records  were  taken  out  of  alphabetical  arrangement  and 
rearranged  to  correspond  to  the  passenger  list,  so  that  each 
man's  record  was  on  top  when  he  responded  to  his  name. 
This  reform  saved  time,  did  away  with  confusion,  and  enabled 
the  unit  to  move  leisurely  and  in  unbroken  formation  up  to 
the  gangplank,  as  if  feeding  into  a  mill. 

Each  passenger  list  was  headed  with  the  name  of  the  em- 
barking organization,  including  company  and  regimental  des- 
ignations, the  organization's  item  number  (a  point  to  be  ex- 
plained fully  later  on  in  this  account),  the  name  of  the 
transport  or  commercial  steamer,  the  date  of  sailing,  and  the 
port  whence  the  ship  was  to  sail.  And,  whether  the  passenger 
were  a  major  general  or  a  buck  private,  the  list  impartially 
showed : 

(1)  His  family  name,  followed  by  his  Christian  name  and  middle 
initial,  and  his  army  serial  number  immediately  under  his  name ; 

(2)  His  rank  and  corps ; 

(3)  His  organization ; 

(4)  Whom  to  notify  in  case  of  emergency  (name  in  full)  ; 

(5)  Relationship  to  him  of  the  person  to  be  notified;  and 

(6)  Full  address  of  the  person  to  be  notified. 

The  Fort  required  of  each  organization  five  copies  of  all 
its  passenger  lists,  signed  by  the  company  officers  who  had 


202  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

made  them  out.  These  lists  were  the  object  of  more  care  than 
was  put  into  the  compilation  of  any  other  records  at  the  port, 
for  it  was  imperative  that  they  correspond  precisely  to  the 
actual  embarkations.  No  American  troop  transport  was  sunk 
on  its  eastward  voyage;  but,  had  one  been,  the  War  Depart- 
ment would  have  been  able  to  make  public  the  exact  list  of 
those  on  board,  in  the  full  assurance  that  the  list  would  con- 
tain not  one  name  too  many  or  too  few. 

It  early  transpired  that  visiting  organizations  were  not  put- 
ting into  their  sailing  lists  and  passenger  lists  that  uniformity 
which  the  port  authorities  desired;  and  consequently  Camp 
Merritt's  own  staff  undertook  to  see  to  it  that  these  documents 
were  accurate  and  in  proper  form.  From  beginning  to  end 
of  the  heaviest  overseas  movement,  the  personnel  adjutant  of 
the  camp  and  his  force  of  assistants  checked  up  the  thousands 
of  visiting  troops  against  their  service  records  and  their  sailing 
lists  and  passenger  lists,  and  finally  turned  these  papers  over 
to  the  troop  commanders  to  be  signed  and  forwarded  to  the 
port  authorities.  Fifteen  men  at  Camp  Merritt  did  nothing 
but  compare  company  rosters  and  service  cards.  Each  soldier 
who  embarked  wore  suspended  from  his  neck  two  metal 
identification  tags  bearing  his  army  serial  number,  so  that  if 
he  lost  his  life,  either  at  sea  or  in  battle  later,  his  body  could 
be  identified.  From  the  first  of  June,  1918,  until  the  armistice. 
Camp  Merritt  maintained  a  detachment  of  twenty-four  men 
who  did  nothing  but  stamp  these  identification  tags. 

The  Government  took  it  for  granted  that  the  spies  and 
agents  of  the  German  Government  would  make  supreme 
efforts  to  gain  military  information  at  the  embarkation  camps. 
Through  these  camps  passed  every  soldier  of  the  A.  E.  F.  An 
effective  enemy  intelligence  service,  if  it  had  focused  at  these 
points  and  obtained  complete  information  of  arrivals  and  de- 
partures, could  have  learned  the  exact  strength  of  the  American 
forces  in  France.  Moreover,  here  was  the  natural  source  of 
information  on  which  the  enemy  might  have  based  submarine 
attacks  on  our  convoys.  Therefore  the  home  Army  raised  its 
thickest  and  highest  walls  of  silence  about  the  embarkation 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  203 

camps;  and  within  them  ruled  the  most  severe  censorship 
known  in  the  United  States. 

The  Government  did  not  carry  its  protective  measures  to 
the  extreme  of  depriving  overseas  men  of  brief  leaves  of 
absence  while  their  units  were  in  the  embarkation  camps;  but 
not  more  than  one-fifth  of  any  transient  force  was  allowed  to 
be  on  leave  at  any  one  time.  Soldiers  going  from  Camp  Merritt 
to  New  York  City  were  cautioned  not  to  confide  in  strangers, 
even  though  no  one  in  the  organization,  not  even  the  com- 
mander himself,  knew  the  exact  hour  when  the  unit  would  be 
summoned  to  the  piers.  Incoming  private  communications  were 
not  censored;  but  the  camp  intelligence  service  maintained  a 
strict  censorship  over  all  outgoing  mail  and  telegrams.  To 
make  assurance  doubly  sure,  the  intelligence  officers  also 
watched  the  post  offices  and  telegraph  stations  in  the  com- 
munities adjacent  to  Camp  Merritt.  In  the  commercial  offices 
the  telegraph  operators  themselves  acted  as  volunteer  censors. 
Officers  and  enlisted  men  at  Camp  Merritt  were  forbidden  to 
file  messages  at  telegraph  offices  outside  the  camp  limits,  and 
the  telegraph  companies  instructed  their  agents  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  camp  not  to  accept  messages  from  anyone  in  uniform. 

An  important  phase  of  intelligence  work  at  the  embarkation 
camps  was  the  so-called  counter-espionage.  This,  as  applied 
to  the  Army,  was  the  system  employed  to  discover  possible 
spies  within  the  military  service.  A  soldier's  loyalty  to  the 
United  States  might  be  under  suspicion;  but,  unless  he  com- 
mitted some  overt  act  that  fastened  guilt  upon  him,  the  Army 
felt  it  to  be  safer  to  leave  him  in  the  service,  where  he  would 
be  under  constant  surveillance,  so  long  as  his  unit  remained 
within  the  United  States.  As  was  natural  enough  in  an  army 
of  nearly  four  million  men,  thousands  were  reported  as  being 
enemy  spies.  The  Intelligence  Service  of  the  Army  painstak- 
ingly investigated  every  such  report.  Most  of  the  suspects  were 
merely  innocent  victims  of  the  inflamed  suspicion  of  their 
fellow  soldiers.  But  now  and  then  a  report  seemed  to  have 
some  basis.  When  the  hour  for  embarkation  came,  the  Army 
took  no  chances  with  men  to  whom  attached  a  shadow  of 


204  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

legitimate  suspicion.  Even  though  espionage  could  not  be 
definitely  proved  against  them,  they  were  not  permitted  to 
cross  the  ocean.  It  was  here  at  the  embarkation  camps  that 
such  men  were  finally  weeded  out. 

The  American  Army  numbered  among  its  members  in  1918 
tens  of  thousands  of  the  citizens  and  subjects  of  other  coun- 
tries, an  appreciable  fraction  of  them  natives  of  Gennany 
and  Austria.  The  Selective  Service  Law  expressly  exempted 
enemy  aliens  from  military  service,  a  provision  which  had  the 
effect  of  forbidding  their  induction.  But  some  of  these  enemy 
aliens,  notably  those  from  Alsace-Lorraine,  were  eager  to  fight 
against  Germany.  Others,  though  they  had  never  taken  citizen- 
ship, were  thoroughly  loyal  to  America.  Moreover,  the  first 
inductions  of  National  Army  troops  came  before  our  formal 
declaration  of  war  against  Austria,  with  the  result  that  many 
Austrians  wore  the  American  uniform.  After  Austria  became 
an  enemy,  the  Army  ordered  the  release  of  unnaturalized  sol- 
diers of  Austrian  birth.  Yet  many  of  these  soldiers  were  from 
subject  countries  which  had  been  oppressed  by  Austria,  and 
some  of  them  resisted  discharge.  The  draft  boards  let  in  a  few 
Germans.  Many  of  the  Austrians  managed  to  stay  in  the  uni- 
form. Moreover,  no  legal  provision  forbade  the  voluntary 
enlistment  of  enemy  aliens. 

The  Army  had  to  handle,  also,  the  problem  of  the  aliens 
from  neutral  or  co-belligerent  countries.  With  the  co-belliger- 
ents we  negotiated  reciprocal  treaties  which  permitted  us  to 
draft  their  nationals  for  service  in  our  Army.  Neutral  aliens 
could,  by  declaring  an  intention  to  become  American  citizens, 
render  themselves  liable  to  military  service.  Many  co-bellig- 
erent and  neutral  aliens  were  in  the  volunteer  organizations. 

These  neutral,  co-belligerent,  and  enemy  aliens  came  to 
the  ports  in  the  ranks  of  the  overseas  column.  There  the  enemy 
aliens,  no  matter  how  bitter  their  hatred  of  their  native  coun- 
tries, faced  an  insurmountable  barrier.  We  might  permit  them 
to  serve  as  American  soldiers  within  the  United  States,  but 
we  would  not  take  them  to  France.  The  Government  made  no 
exception  to  this  rule.  Moreover,  other  aliens  were  in  a  sense 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  205 

volunteers;  they  might  at  any  time  apply  for  discharge  and 
obtain  it.  The  Government,  because  it  wanted  to  remove  from 
such  men  the  disability  of  alienage,  simplified  the  naturaliza- 
tion process,  set  up  naturalization  courts  at  the  army  camps, 
and  made  it  possible  for  aliens  to  gain  American  citizenship 
quickly. 

One  of  the  most  exhaustive  inspections  at  the  embarkation 
camps  was  that  which  probed  the  citizenship  of  every  man 
who  applied  for  overseas  transportation;  and  here  the  work 
of  the  naturalization  courts  became  especially  heavy.  The 
court  at  Camp  Merritt  was  established  in  the  spring  of  1918. 
In  its  first  month  this  court  naturalized  2,461  aliens,  whereas 
only  513  aliens  to  whom  the  subject  was  broached  refused 
American  citizenship.  From  the  records  of  that  month  we  select 
for  tabulation  a  few  interesting  and  significant  figures: 


Country 

Naturalized 

Refused  Naturalization 

Great  Britain 

37^ 

10 

Russia 

415 

69 

Italy 

593 

140 

Germany 

2 

1 

Austria 

15 

4 

Belgium 

24 

1 

Denmark 

44 

3 

Sweden 

74 

47 

Norway 

54 

19 

Netherlands 

22 

1 

Mexico 

6 

8 

In  the  autumn  of  1917  and  the  early  part  of  our  first  war 
winter,  the  troop  convoys  sailed  infrequently  from  our  coast. 
Two  or  three  weeks,  or  even  a  whole  month,  measured  the 
intervals  between  "sailing  days"  at  Camp  Merritt.  But  when 
spring  approached  in  1918  and  ship  after  ship  joined  our 
transport  fleet,  and  especially  when  the  British  threw  in  their 
great  mass  of  passenger  tonnage,  the  departures  grew  more 
frequent,  until,  by  midsummer,  "sailing  day"  at  Camp  Merritt 


2o6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

recurred  every  forty-eight  to  seventy-two  hours.  Those  were 
the  times  when  visiting  troops  scarcely  saw  their  barracks, 
when  holidays  and  leaves  of  absence  were  unknown  to  the 
permanent  camp  staif .  Each  departure  represented  to  the  camp 
a  victory  won,  a  great  task  accomplished;  yet  the  last  column 
had  scarcely  swung  out  upon  the  road  to  the  river  landing 
when  Camp  Merritt  rolled  up  its  sleeves,  spat  on  its  hands, 
and,  with  the  marching  in  of  a  new  organization  from  the 
railroad  station,  tackled  another  job  just  as  hard. 

There  was  little  sleep  for  the  overseas  soldier  on  the  night 
before  he  sailed  for  France.  The  convenience  of  the  Port  de- 
manded that  all  troops  to  be  embarked  in  a  single  day  be  on 
the  piers  by  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when  the  force  of 
pier  inspectors  and  gangplank  checkers  came  on  duty.  The 
checking  of  men  on  board  the  ships  was  exacting  work.  No 
man  could  continue  at  it  long  at  a  stretch  and  remain  accurate. 
The  Port  conducted  embarkation,  then,  in  the  morning  and 
early  afternoon,  when  the  checkers  were  fresh.  An  embarkation 
took  from  Camp  Merritt  between  8,000  and  1 2,000  men,  and 
the  movement  of  these  troops  from  the  camp  to  the  piers  con- 
sumed about  five  hours;  so  that  much  of  the  trip  inevitably 
occurred  during  the  bleak  period  between  midnight  and  dawn. 

The  practice  at  Camp  Merritt  was  to  start  the  departing 
troops  out  in  columns  of  2,000  or  3,000  men — enough  so  that 
each  column  fully  loaded  one  ferry-boat.  The  columns  were 
dispatched  at  half-hour  intervals,  the  first  ordinarily  at  one 
o'clock,  the  second  at  half  past  one,  and  so  on  through  the 
four  or  five  columns ;  the  last  one  seldom  left  camp  later  than 
half  past  four.  When  troops  had  reached  the  camp  late,  the 
activities  in  preparation  for  their  departure  often  continued 
up  to  the  minute  of  the  command  to  fall  in.  It  was  from  three 
to  four  miles  from  the  camp  to  Alpine  Landing,  according  to 
the  location  of  the  troops'  quarters  in  camp ;  so  that  a  column 
was  on  the  road  to  the  river  for  at  least  an  hour.  Assuming  that 
the  ferry-boat  was  loaded  in  half  an  hour,  it  was  half  past 
two  or,  more  likely,  three  o'clock  before  the  first  boat  started 
down  the  Hudson,  to  be  followed  at  half-hour  intervals  by  the 


Photo  by   Signal   Corps 


AN   ARMY   NATURALIZATION   COURT 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

REST  ON  ROAD  TO  ALPINE  LANDING 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 


TURN  IN  OLD  CORNWALLIS  ROAD  DESCENDING 
HUDSON  PALISADES 


Photo  by   Signal   Corps 

TROOPS  AT  ALPINE  BOARDING  FERRYBOATS  FOR 
TRANSPORT   PIERS 


PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED  207 

others.  The  ferry-boat  took  two  hours  to  make  the  run  to 
lower  Manhattan;  so  that  the  first  troops  reached  the  piers 
shortly  before  five  o'clock,  and  the  last  ones  arrived  by  half 
past  seven. 

In  dispatching  troops  to  the  piers  by  ferry,  the  Port  violated 
the  military  principle  that  units  should  always  travel  together, 
instead  of  split  up  and  mixed  with  parts  of  other  units.  When 
the  columns  were  formed  in  the  camp,  they  were  made  up  of 
platoons  or  other  fractional  detachments  of  two  or  more  units. 
A  regiment  would  find  itself  divided  up  among  the  departing 
columns.  By  this  system  the  embarkation  authorities  gained 
efficiency  at  the  piers.  If  a  ferry-boat  had  carried  an  entire  regi- 
ment, it  would  have  debarked  its  whole  load  upon  the  single 
pier  to  which  was  moored  that  regiment's  transport.  Under 
such  a  plan,  the  pier  in  question  would  have  been  congested 
with  work,  whereas  the  other  piers  would  have  been  idle  until 
the  following  ferry-boats  arrived.  As  it  was,  each  ferry-boat 
carried  parts  of  several  units.  The  first  boat  down  in  the  morn- 
ing touched  at  the  northernmost  pier  and  discharged  a  few  of 
its  passengers,  went  on  to  the  next  and  put  off  some  others, 
and  continued  down  the  river  in  this  way  until  it  had  dis- 
tributed detachments  to  all  the  piers  which  were  embarking 
soldiers  that  day.  The  next  boat  delivered  more  men  to  all 
the  piers,  and  so  on  until  the  last  ferry  completed  the  quotas. 
Thus  all  the  piers  began  work  practically  at  once,  and  there 
was  congestion  nowhere. 

When  overseas  troops  marched  out  of  Camp  Merritt,  that 
faithful  cicerone,  the  liaison  officer,  who  had  been  their  con- 
ductor while  they  were  in  camp,  marched  with  the  men  over 
the  miles  to  Alpine  Landing.  First  to  greet  them  when  they 
arrived  from  their  training  camp,  he  was  last  to  bid  them  the 
camp's  official  good-bye.  As  the  frothing  water  widened  be- 
tween him  and  the  downbound  galleon  of  the  commutation 
routes,  now  translated  to  so  strange  a  trade,  he  stood  on  the 
landing  alone,  a  living  symbol  of  the  new  order  in  military 
travel. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
CASUALS 

THIS  narrative  has  been  preoccupied  thus  far  with  such 
activities  of  Camp  Merritt  as  were  typical  of  what 
went  on  at  all  the  embarkation  camps.  Camp  Merritt, 
however,  was  unique  in  one  important  particular:  it  was  the 
one  camp,  so  far  as  the  New  York  Port  of  Embarkation  was 
concerned,  which  prepared  for  embarkation  and  sent  on  the 
road  to  France,  rejoicing  or  sorrowing,  as  might  be,  that  orphan 
of  the  military  service,  the  casual. 

The  casual  surprised  the  American  Army  mightily.  It  was 
not  prepared  for  him,  had  not  taken  him  into  account.  He 
appeared  suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  like  a  new  baby  in  an 
already  overcrowded  family;  and,  having  appeared,  he  pro- 
ceeded to  grow  prodigiously  in  number  and  to  make  lusty 
demands  for  food,  clothing,  and  a  place  in  the  military  organi- 
zation. Above  all,  he  demanded  travel,  although  there  had 
been  no  adequate  provision  for  his  travel.  Consequently,  his 
presence  in  the  scheme  of  things  put  a  heavy  burden  upon 
the  Port  of  Embarkation,  which  finally  solved  the  problem 
by  placing  upon  Camp  Merritt  the  onus  of  arranging  for  the 
voyage  to  France  of  all  casuals. 

The  Army  had  always  had,  to  be  sure,  a  few  casuals — 
always,  that  is,  since  the  Spanish  War.  The  name,  however, 
had  never  struck  the  public  ear,  or  become  so  familiar  as  it 
now  is.  It  was  an  obscure  word,  even  in  American  military 
terminology;  an  esoteric  word  of  the  narrow  circle  of  quarter- 
master officers  who  managed  the  transportation  of  troops  to 
the  Philippine  Islands.  There  were  always  a  few  casuals  going 
to  and  fro  between  the  Philippine  Islands  and  the  United 
States  or  to  the  Panama  Canal,  traveling  as  individuals  or  in 


CASUALS  209 

little  groups.  They  had  constituted  no  problem  whatever  to 
those  who  were  then  in  charge  of  military  transportation.  Nat- 
urally enough,  then,  when  the  Army  was  devising  its  great 
system  for  transporting  the  expedition  to  France  it  gave  scant 
consideration  to  the  casual ;  indeed,  it  all  but  left  him  out  of 
the  equation.  Judging  from  the  past,  there  was  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  number  of  casuals  would  bear  any  greater 
proportion  to  the  body  of  organized  troops  than  it  had  borne 
in  our  Army  prior  to  the  World  War. 

The  Army  was  caught  quite  unprepared  for  what  actually 
occurred.  As  early  as  the  autumn  of  1917  there  were  indica- 
tions that  the  transportation  of  casuals  might  become  a  prob- 
lem of  sorts;  for  it  was  then  that  the  Army  began  sending 
overseas  unattached  officers  and  small  groups  of  specialized 
troops  for  particular  service  with  the  A.  E.  F,  The  officers 
were  usually  experts  of  one  sort  or  another — men  taken  from 
civil  life  and  commissioned  in  the  Army.  The  inherent  nature 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  required  it  to  be  a  unit  almost  as  self-contained 
as  an  entire  nation.  Whatever  kinds  of  specialists,  particularly 
of  the  industrial  sort,  a  whole  nation  required  for  the  balanced 
maintenance  of  its  life,  the  A.  E.  F.  also  needed.  The  earliest 
departures  of  this  sort  to  France  involved  little  bands  of  tele- 
graph operators,  squads  of  men  experienced  in  cold  and  dry 
storage,  detachments  of  stevedores,  companies  of  cooks  and 
bakers  for  distribution  among  the  permanent  posts  and  camps 
which  the  A.  E.  F.  was  beginning  to  build,  officers  schooled  in 
railroading  or  general  construction,  and  the  variety  of  experts 
required  by  the  Services  of  Supply.  These  soldiers  traveled, 
not  in  regular  organizations,  but  as  individuals  or  groups 
under  separate  orders.  They  were,  in  short,  casuals. 

The  increasing  number  of  them  presently  began  to  add  a 
vexatious  amount  of  work  to  the  duties  of  the  Embarkation 
Service.  There  was  almost  as  much  preliminary  routine  detail 
about  the  overseas  passage  of  a  single  casual  officer  as  for  that 
of  a  whole  company  of  organized  soldiers.  It  was  easier  to 
manage  the  embarkation  of  a  division  of  line  troops  than  to 
put  through  the  Port  of  Embarkation  a  single  trainload  of 


210  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

casuals.  The  Port  managed  somehow  to  get  through  the  earli- 
est weeks  of  overseas  movement  without  having  to  devote  a 
special  organization  to  the  handling  of  the  casuals;  but  by 
early  winter,  when  the  casual  travel  had  increased  rather  than 
diminished,  the  regular  port  organization  could  no  longer 
bother  with  this  extra  toil  added  to  its  general  routine.  It 
was  then  that  Camp  Merritt  undertook  to  provide  hospitality 
for  the  casuals,  put  them  through  the  embarkation  mill,  and 
then  hand  them  over  to  the  receiving  system  of  the  A.  E.  F. 

Practically  all  of  the  earliest  casuals  were,  then,  officers 
and  enlisted  men  ordered  to  France  on  special  assignments. 
By  December  we  had  placed  in  France  an  expeditionary  force 
of  appreciable  size;  and  the  sequel  of  its  embarkation  was  a 
trickling  stream  of  casuals  of  a  new  sort — stragglers,  men  who, 
for  one  reason  or  another,  had  fallen  behind  their  columns 
on  the  march  to  France. 

For  a  multitude  of  reasons,  men  were  left  behind  when 
their  organizations  embarked  on  the  ships.  They  might  have 
been  actual  cowards  and  deserters ;  they  might  have  been  absent 
without  leave  when  their  units  entrained  at  camp  or  embarked 
at  the  port,  though  guiltless  of  intention  to  desert  their  organi- 
zations; they  might  have  overstayed  their  leave  and  then 
feared  to  return,  dreading  punishment;  they  might  have  lost 
their  way  while  traveling  to  meet  their  units  at  designated 
points;  or  they  might  have  missed  trains,  or  been  left  sick  in 
the  hospitals,  or  found  themselves  cut  adrift  and  lagging  be- 
hind through  any  one  of  a  dozen  other  combinations  of  cir- 
cumstance. Innocent  or  guilty,  culpable  or  merely  unlucky, 
one  and  all  eventually  came  to  Camp  Merritt,  where  the  spe- 
cial organization  checked  them  in,  assigned  them  to  quarters 
and  messes,  tried  and  convicted  or  acquitted  the  prisoners,  pre- 
pared service  records  for  those  who  had  none,  organized  them 
all  into  groups,  provided  leaders  for  them,  put  them  on  the 
transports,  and  shipped  them  every  one  to  France. 

No  sooner  had  the  stream  of  stragglers  through  Camp  Mer- 
ritt begun  to  grow  in  volume  than  a  new  factor  complicated 
overseas  transportation:  the  A.  E.  F.  began  calling  for  re- 


CASUALS  211 

placement  troops,  and  these  replacements  began  arriving  at 
the  port.  This  was  in  January,  1918.  At  that  time  Camp 
Merritt  had  been  only  a  few  weeks  engaged  in  handling,  sal- 
vaging, as  it  were,  and  forwarding  the  human  detritus  of  the 
on-moving  host.  The  replacements,  too,  were  military  maver- 
icks, unbranded,  completely  nondescript  except  for  the  single 
item  of  their  past  training.  They  came  simply  as  infantry  re- 
placements, artillery  replacements,  engineer  replacements — 
human  plaster  and  putty  for  plugging  up  the  chinks  and  gaps 
in  the  wall  of  men  which  the  United  States  was  erecting  on  the 
frontier  of  civilization.  In  number  they  were  legion,  these 
replacements;  but  they  were  without  formal  organization, 
usually  without  officers,  and,  at  the  time  of  the  most  desperate 
demand  for  troops,  without  discipline,  as  the  Army  defines 
discipline.  Sometimes  they  came  to  port  in  their  civilian 
clothes,  directly  from  the  draft  boards.  They  fitted  into  no 
transportation  scheme,  and  the  Port  did  the  convenient  thing — 
sent  them  to  Camp  Merritt  to  be  treated  as  casuals. 

Camp  Merritt  solved  the  problem  of  the  casual  by  creating 
a  casual  camp — a  camp  within  a  camp.  This  was  a  spontaneous 
evolution  from  the  conditions.  The  first  casuals  of  the  strag- 
gling type  began  reaching  the  Port  of  Embarkation  along  in 
November,  1917.  As  they  reported,  the  authorities  sent  them 
to  Camp  Merritt,  the  only  port  camp  in  existence  at  that  time. 
But  little  attention  was  paid  to  them.  The  camp,  with  an 
insufficient  force,  was  struggling  to  work  out  a  new  science. 
These  estrays  of  the  service  were  outside  the  routine  line  of 
progress,  and  no  one  was  charged  with  responsibility  for  them. 
As  a  matter  of  form,  they  registered  themselves  at  camp  head- 
quarters, which  assigned  them  in  a  random  way  to  barracks 
wherever  there  chanced  to  be  vacant  beds,  and  then  promptly 
forgot  them.  There  was  no  officer  to  see  to  it  that  they  were 
fed,  none  to  concern  himself  with  whether  they  were  properly 
dressed — no  one  to  keep  track  of  them.  They  were  absolutely 
footloose,  overrunning  the  place  as  camp  followers  and  super- 
numeraries. They  ate  wherever  they  could  find  a  mess  that 
would  extend  hospitality  to  them.  Many  of  them  owed  their 


212  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

predicament  to  their  roving  dispositions.  These  continued  to 
follow  their  predilections,  making  of  the  camp  only  a  sort  of 
general  headquarters  where  they  could  sleep  on  occasions  or 
obtain  a  free  meal  whenever  the  spirit  moved  them  to  drop  in. 
All  in  all,  these  earliest  irregulars  were  having  a  fine  time — 
largely  at  Uncle  Sam's  expense — without  a  thought  for  the 
service  which  they  might  some  day  be  expected  to  render. 
In  only  one  respect  was  their  plight  unfortunate :  lacking  place 
in  a  recognized  organization,  they  became  strangers  to  the 
monthly  pay  check. 

Eventually  the  subject  forced  itself  upon  the  attention  of 
the  camp  administration.  Headquarters,  consulting  its  books 
late  in  November,  found  500  men  registered  as  casuals.  Where 
were  these  men^  How  were  they  faring?  What  were  they 
doing?  Nobody  knew.  Headquarters  decided  to  set  apart  sev- 
eral barracks  for  them,  appoint  an  officer  to  be  their  general 
guardian,  maintain  some  sort  of  restraint  upon  them,  and 
eventually  form  them  into  companies  for  shipment  to  France. 
Cold  weather  had  set  in.  Many  of  the  casuals  were  clad  in 
thin  cotton  uniforms,  and  there  was  no  regular  system  whereby 
they  could  be  provided  with  suitable  clothing;  consequently, 
a  supply  officer  was  added  to  the  casual  organization.  The 
haphazard  method  of  feeding  the  casuals  in  such  messes  as 
were  able  to  take  care  of  additional  appetites  was  found  to 
be  insufficient;  four  camp  kitchens  were  set  apart  for  casuals 
and  regular  messes  arranged. 

This  makeshift  arrangement  proved  unable  to  subject  the 
men  to  a  proper  restraint.  On  the  morning  after  Christmas, 
1917,  the  camp  rolls  showed  that  760  casuals  of  the  straggling 
sort  had  reported  at  Camp  Merritt.  That  morning  the  camp 
authorities  attempted  to  secure  a  detail  of  seventy-five  men  for 
a  special  job  of  work  at  the  casual  barracks.  The  officers  called 
760  names,  but  only  twenty  casuals  answered  "Present" :  the 
rest  were  still  celebrating  the  holiday  in  New  York.  This 
trifling  episode  convinced  the  authorities  that  they  had  a  diffi- 
cult problem  on  their  hands.  Thereupon  they  formally  estab- 
lished the  overseas  casual  camp  of  Camp  Merritt.  An  officer 


CASUALS  213 

with  the  rank  of  lieutenant  colonel  was  placed  in  command 
and  assigned  to  the  task  of  devising  a  system  for  the  care  of 
casuals.  This  he  did  (1)  by  occupying  a  definite  section  of 
Camp  Merritt  and  forming  around  himself  a  regular  head- 
quarters organization,  with  adjutant,  personnel  officer,  supply 
officers,  medical  officers,  a  police  force,  and  the  like;  and  (2) 
by  organizing  the  casuals  into  companies  of  sixty-six  men 
each,  placing  these  companies  under  competent  control  and 
discipline,  and  otherwise  forging  the  material  of  a  system 
which  in  time  became  an  important  link  in  the  transportation 
chain. 

Overseas  casual  companies  were  numbered  consecutively, 
starting  with  No.  1.  By  the  beginning  of  1918,  stragglers  were 
daily  reaching  Camp  Merritt,  either  on  their  own  initiative  or 
on  that  of  military  organizations  throughout  the  country,  in 
numbers  ranging  from  a  dozen  to  a  hundred.  On  January  5, 
1918,  the  first  eight  overseas  casual  companies  went  to 
Hoboken  for  embarkation.  Each  company  numbered  fifty  men. 
From  that  time  on,  the  casual  camp  steadily  grew,  until  even- 
tually it  became  the  largest  single  activity  within  Camp  Mer- 
ritt. Eventually  some  50,000  stragglers  came  to  the  camp, 
joined  casual  companies,  and  voyaged  to  France.  The  apex  of 
this  movement  was  September,  1918,  when  nearly  10,000 
casuals  of  the  drifting  sort  boarded  the  transports. 

One  interesting  oddity  of  the  situation  was  that,  until  after 
tlie  armistice,  Camp  Merritt  never  possessed  formal  authority 
for  a  permanent  staff  at  its  casual  camp.  It  took  Washington 
a  long  time  to  realize  the  great  volume  of  casual  travel  and 
the  difficulty  of  managing  it.  The  casual-camp  commander, 
however,  could  not  operate  without  assistants;  and  he  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  some  sort  of  left-handed  permission  to  go 
among  his  transient  guests  and  impress  such  help  as  he  needed. 
More  than  one  casual  officer,  having  bidden  his  friends  a  proud 
good-bye  and  received  their  felicitations  upon  his  wonderful 
opportunity  to  see  service  in  France,  found  himself,  to  his 
surprise  and  intense  disgust,  detained  at  Camp  Merritt  and 
assigned  to  a  prosaic  job  in  the  administration  of  the  casual 


214  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

camp.  The  same  fate  overtook  enlisted  men  en  route  to  France 
as  casuals  on  special  orders.  From  such  material  the  camp 
command  picked  and  chose.  It  seized  stenographers  and  field 
clerks  and  inspectors,  all  of  whom  supposed  they  were  to  join 
the  A.  E.  F. 

At  one  time,  late  in  January,  1918,  a  company  of  sixty 
cooks,  newly  graduated  from  an  army  cooks'  and  bakers'  school 
at  San  Francisco,  reached  Camp  Merritt  in  response  to  over- 
seas orders.  The  A.  E.  F.  had  at  this  time  a  serious  shortage 
of  cooks,  but  the  casual  camp  at  Camp  Merritt  had  a  more 
serious  one.  There  were  2,000  casuals  in  camp,  but  scarcely 
any  cooks  at  all.  The  camp  command  did  not  send  the  sixty 
cooks  to  Hoboken.  It  assigned  them  to  the  new  kitchens  in 
the  casual  camp.  This  virtual  kidnapping  roused  wrath  across 
the  water,  and  for  a  time  it  seemed  that  Washington  might 
step  in  and  order  the  men  sent  on  their  way.  But  just  then 
a  providential  epidemic  of  measles  broke  out  in  the  casual 
camp,  and  one  of  the  cooks  contracted  the  malady.  This  un- 
lucky circumstance — unlucky  for  no  one  but  the  victim — per- 
mitted the  camp  authorities  to  quarantine  the  entire  outfit 
without  violating  either  orders  or  their  own  consciences.  By 
the  time  the  quarantine  had  expired,  Washington  had  for- 
gotten about  the  case ;  and  those  sixty  cooks — who,  if  they  live 
a  thousand  years,  will  never  be  able  to  refer  to  the  affair  in 
gentle  terms — failed  to  see  the  green  shores  of  France.  They 
remained  to  the  end,  serving  up  slum  and  canned  Willie  to  the 
army  casuals. 

The  Camp  Merritt  casual  camp  was  well  established  in 
January,  1918,  when  the  first  replacement  troops  began  mov- 
ing into  the  port.  The  replacements  resembled  casuals  in  that 
they  were  often  incompletely  organized,  even  without  officers. 
Yet  before  they  could  embark  they  had  to  have  their  complete 
service  records,  sailing  lists,  and  passenger  lists.  It  was  con- 
venient for  the  Port  to  treat  them  as  casuals,  and  the  casual 
camp  at  Camp  Merritt  seemed  to  have  been  made  expressly 
for  them.  On  no  day  up  to  the  armistice  were  there  fewer  than 
several  dozen  detached  and  casual  officers  at  Camp  Merritt 


CASUALS  215 

awaiting  embarkation;  and  oftener  there  were  several  hun- 
dred. The  first  plan  adopted  by  the  casual  camp  in  its  treat- 
ment of  replacements  was  to  select  overseas  casual  officers  to 
put  in  temporary  command  of  replacement  units.  These  emer- 
gency foster-fathers  were  expected  to  attend  to  the  embarka- 
tion records  and  shepherd  their  flocks  across  the  ocean,  after 
which  the  replacements  went  into  the  fold  of  the  A.  E.  F. 

The  plan  had,  however,  no  great  success.  Many  of  the  casual 
officers  were  men  newly  taken  from  civil  life,  without  military 
experience  of  any  sort,  little  familiar  with  army  paper  work 
and  still  less  familiar  with  the  handling  of  troops.  The  regu- 
lar officers  stationed  at  Camp  Merritt  obtained  much  covert 
amusement  by  watching  ex-college  professors  or  office  men 
trying  to  line  up  companies  of  replacement  troops  and  march 
them  to  their  places  in  the  embarkation  columns.  Casual  offi- 
cers, drafted  for  this  work,  soon  gave  way  to  permanent  block 
commanders  within  the  casual  camp,  each  block  commander 
having  jurisdiction  over  the  replacements  within  his  own 
section.  He  prepared  the  records  for  the  men  in  his  block  and, 
later,  conducted  them  to  the  pier.  But  he  did  not  embark  with 
his  proteges:  at  shipside  he  turned  them  over  to  some  of  the 
casual  officers  on  the  same  transport.  These  officers  might  be 
ignorant  of  military  procedure,  t>ut  they  could  master  the 
regulations  for  the  conduct  of  troops  on  shipboard,  they  could 
put  the  men  through  the  various  boat  drills  and  fire  drills,  and 
in  the  event  of  a  torpedoing  they  could  superintend  the  aban- 
donment of  the  ship. 

Less  than  4,000  replacement  troops  embarked  in  January. 
Thereafter  the  number  steadily  grew,  until  in  the  summer  of 
1918  as  many  as  50,000  a  month  went  aboard  the  transports. 
As  the  war  progressed,  the  tendency  was  toward  a  greater 
proportion  of  replacement  troops. 

At  length  there  came  about  a  drastic  change  in  the  method 
of  transporting  overseas  the  casuals  of  the  vagrant  sort.  For 
a  long  time  the  military  machine  on  this  side  organized  them 
into  mixed  companies  and  forwarded  them  to  France  in  the 
expectation  that  each  man  would  ultimately  catch  up  with 


2i6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  organization  which  had  left  him  behind;  but  this  system 
only  made  confusion  in  our  French  ports.  The  A.  E.  F.  was 
on  strange  soil,  and  the  whereabouts  of  units  and  organizations 
were  often  not  accurately  known  to  the  administrations  of  the 
debarkation  ports.  Hundreds  of  casuals  became  lost  entirely 
in  France  and  never  found  their  original  companies.  In  fact, 
after  a  time  the  A.  E.  F.  abandoned  the  attempt  to  forward 
stragglers  to  their  own  units,  and  treated  them  all  as  simple 
replacements.  The  debarkation-port  officers  ascertained  from 
each  casual  what  his  training  had  been,  and  then  sent  him  to 
any  organization  which  happened  to  need  soldiers  of  his  type. 

It  was  this  same  simplified  system  which,  by  official  order 
of  the  War  Department,  was  adopted  in  the  United  States  in 
July,  1918.  This  order  required  the  Port  of  Embarkation  to 
treat  as  replacements  all  casuals  on  this  side  of  the  water. 
As  these  men  reached  the  casual  camp,  they  were  sorted  accord- 
ing to  their  training  and  placed  in  skeleton  replacement  com- 
panies— infantry  casuals  in  one  company  together,  medicals 
in  another,  quartermaster  casuals  in  a  third,  and  so  on.  If  over- 
seas organizations  reached  Camp  Merritt  deficient  in  strength, 
the  camp  drew  upon  these  casual  replacement  companies  to 
bring  their  numbers  up  to  par.  Such  a  system  put  many  of  the 
casuals  into  regularly  commanded  ranks,  and  incidentally 
made  it  easier  to  pass  them  through  the  process  of  embarka- 
tion. Still,  with  overseas  laggards  arriving  at  Camp  Merritt 
at  the  rate,  sometimes,  of  1,000  a  day,  the  organized  units 
embarking  at  the  port  could  not  use  all  the  casuals;  and, 
whenever  the  skeleton  companies  reached  full  strength,  the 
excess  supply  embarked  simply  as  replacements. 

When  a  casual  soldier  arrived  at  Camp  Merritt  he  reported 
at  headquarters,  registered,  and  received  an  order  which  as- 
signed him  to  a  certain  block  in  the  casual  camp  and  provided 
him  with  a  bed  in  one  of  the  barrack  buildings.  His  first  visit 
was  to  the  supply  warehouses,  where  his  clothing  and  personal 
equipment  were  brought  up  to  the  overseas  standard.  Then  he 
was  assigned  to  a  skeleton  company  in  the  arm  of  the  service 
to  which  he  belonged.  His  immediate  officer  in  the  block  then 


CASUALS  217 

prepared  his  service  record — brought  it  up  to  date  if  it  were 
deficient  in  that  respect,  or  made  it  out  anew  on  the  soldier's 
unsupported  say-so  if,  as  was  often  the  fact,  he  had  lost  it.  A 
record  of  the  latter  sort  was  regarded  as  a  temporary  record, 
to  be  used  only  until  the  permanent  record  could  be  located, 
and  was  so  marked. 

The  equipping  of  casuals  was  a  tremendous  job.  Most  of 
them  reached  camp  without  adequate  equipment;  many  re- 
quired completely  new  outfits.  One  entire  warehouse  at  the 
camp  stored  nothing  but  ordnance  and  quartermaster  supplies 
for  casuals  and  replacement  soldiers. 

It  taxed  the  ability  of  the  casual  camp  command  to  feed  its 
guests,  largely  because  their  number  fluctuated  so  capriciously. 
Organized  troops  brought  their  own  mess  organizations  and, 
when  they  moved  into  camp,  simply  occupied  kitchens  and 
mess  halls  in  their  areas  and  proceeded  to  subsist  exactly  as 
in  their  training  camps.  But  the  floating  population  of  the 
Army,  the  casuals  and  replacement  troops,  possessed  no  mess 
sergeants  or  kitchens  or  cooks ;  and  Camp  Merritt  itself  had  to 
provide  for  feeding  them.  One  week  there  might  be  as  many 
as  20,000  casuals  of  all  sorts  at  Camp  Merritt,  and  the  next 
week  only  1,000.  The  camp  mess  department  had  to  be  ex- 
tremely flexible.  Casuals  arrived  at  all  hours  of  day  and  night, 
often  unheralded.  The  casual  camp  operated  an  all-night 
kitchen  to  feed  hungry  arrivals  between  sunset  and  morning. 
Whenever  any  large  detachment  of  casuals  or  replacements 
reached  Camp  Merritt,  cooks  were  sent  immediately  to  the 
section  assigned  them,  and  their  next  meal  was  ready  at  the 
appointed  hour.  When  the  camp  was  filled  to  capacity  it  took 
130  men  to  do  the  cooking  for  the  casuals.  The  subsistence 
office  of  the  casual  camp  operated  sporadically  more  than  150 
mess  halls. 

In  the  spring  of  1918  a  third  class  of  men  began  accumu- 
lating in  the  Camp  Merritt  casual  camp:  soldiers  rejected  by 
the  Port  for  overseas  service  because  of  alienage,  physical  dis- 
ability, or  other  reasons,  including  the  cryptic  one,  "for  the 
good  of  the  service."  These  men  the  camp  distributed  from 


2i8  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

time  to  time  among  cisatlantic  posts  where  they  might  be 
serviceable. 

Camp  Merritt  maintained  a  card-index  record  of  every  man 
who  passed  through  it.  The  camp  personnel  officer  had  charge 
of  this  activity,  which  in  the  summer  of  1918  kept  three  shifts 
of  men  feverishly  occupied  making  out  cards  day  and  night. 
The  card  record  brought  to  the  camp,  incidentally,  a  duty 
which  it  had  not  foreseen.  Soldiers  were  often  careless  about 
letting  their  friends  know  their  whereabouts.  All  during  the 
overseas  movement  the  War  Department  in  Washington  was 
flooded  with  inquiries  about  soldiers.  Washington  could  fol- 
low the  movements  of  organized  troops  overseas,  and  it  main- 
tained an  extensive  branch  to  answer  questions  from  the 
anxious  relatives  of  men  in  the  regular  units;  but  Washington 
did  not  attempt  to  keep  track  of  casuals.  Instead,  it  referred  to 
the  port  headquarters  at  Hoboken  and  Camp  Merritt  all  ques- 
tions relating  to  them.  Consequently  the  camp,  which  handled 
the  overseas  passage  of  all  American  casuals  except  the  rela- 
tively few  who  embarked  at  the  independent  Port  of  Embarka- 
tion at  Newport  News,  Virginia,  became  a  central  bureau  of 
information  about  casuals.  The  camp  set  up  a  separate  office 
to  answer  queries,  whether  official  ones  from  the  War  Depart- 
ment or  unofficial  ones  from  private  citizens. 

Casual  officers  arriving  at  the  Port  of  Embarkation  of  New 
York  might  accept  the  hospitality  of  Camp  Merritt  if  they 
chose,  as  many  did.  Often  there  were,  at  one  time,  300  casual 
officers  in  Camp  Merritt  awaiting  embarkation.  To  these  the 
camp  served  as  a  hotel.  They  were  assigned  to  quarters  and  to 
messes,  and  they  paid  for  their  entertainment  the  one  dollar 
a  day  collected  from  each  officer  at  any  army  mess.  The  offi- 
cers' club  at  Camp  Merritt  was  extensively  patronized  by 
these  casuals. 

The  concentration  of  all  New  York  casuals  at  Camp  Mer- 
ritt involved  the  camp  in  a  related  enterprise  which  grew  to 
be  one  of  its  most  interesting  and  important  activities.  The 
camp  became  the  single  agency  for  collecting  and  forwarding 
overseas  all  deserters  and  men  absent  without*  leave   from 


CASUALS  219 

organizations  which  had  proceeded  to  France  through  New 
York  and  its  subsidiary  ports.  Under  the  system  finally 
adopted,  all  embarking  organizations  surrendered  their  claim 
to  any  men  left  behind  for  any  reason  whatsoever,  and  passed 
to  Camp  Merritt  the  jurisdiction  over  such  men.  Technically, 
then,  a  deserter  from  the  Nth  Infantry  became,  after  the  Nth 
had  gone  aboard  its  ships,  a  deserter  from  Camp  Merritt;  and 
in  the  eyes  of  military  law  a  man  absent  without  leave  from 
the  Blank  Engineers,  after  his  regiment  had  departed,  was 
absent  without  leave  from  Camp  Merritt.  It  became  the  duty 
of  the  camp  to  apprehend  these  delinquents  and  restore  them 
to  the  military  service. 

Deserters  and  A.  W.  O.  L.'s  became  so  numerous  that  in 
April,  1918,  Camp  Merritt  established  within  the  casual  camp 
a  special  stockade  for  the  detention  of  these  men.  The  prison 
camp  thereafter  expanded  until  it  embraced  sixteen  barracks, 
each  accommodating  sixty-six  men,  and  four  kitchens  and  mess 
halls,  the  entire  block  surrounded  by  a  barbed-wire  fence 
charged  with  electricity.  Just  as  the  overseas  casual  camp  was 
a  camp  within  a  camp,  with  a  complete  camp  administration 
in  miniature,  so  the  stockade  was  a  still  smaller  camp,  self- 
contained,  within  the  casual  camp.  The  stockade,  at  its  largest, 
was  none  too  large  to  accommodate  the  prisoners  who  were 
brought  in  or  who  surrendered  themselves,  although  the  pro- 
cedure was  so  speeded  up  that  the  average  prisoner  remained 
in  the  stockade  only  six  days,  in  which  period  he  went  before 
the  court-martial  and  was  tried,  convicted  and  sentenced,  or 
acquitted.  The  stockade,  accommodating  as  it  did  nearly  1 ,000 
men,  was  emptied  and  refilled  once  every  week,  to  reduce  its 
transactions  to  equivalent  terms.  The  stockade  administration 
came  to  include  twelve  officers  and  about  250  enlisted  men. 
Not  all  these  troops  were  required  at  the  stockade  to  manage 
the  prisoners :  some  of  them  spent  much  of  their  time  traveling 
about  the  United  States,  bringing  in  deserters  and  other 
prisoners  accountable  to  the  A.  E.  F. 

It  was  possible  at  Camp  Merritt  to  get  some  idea  of  the 
extent  to  which  desertion  made  inroads  upon  the  ranks  of 


220  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

America's  World- War  Army.  Camp  Merritt  did  not,  to  be 
sure,  come  in  contact  with  desertion  from  units  stationed 
within  the  United  States;  but  it  is  reasonable  to  assume  that 
desertion  was  greatest  among  troops  facing  the  ordeal  of 
actually  meeting  the  enemy,  and  most  nearly  negligible  among 
troops  safe  in  the  United  States.  The  A.  E.  F.  was  largely  an 
army  by  compulsion.  Logically,  the  tendency  to  desert  would 
be  greater  among  conscripted  troops  than  among  volunteers. 
These  overseas  troops,  moreover,  faced  warfare  deadlier  than 
any  the  world  had  ever  known;  and  the  very  sea  which  they 
must  cross  to  reach  the  scene  of  conflict  was  full  of  peril.  If 
ever  cowardice  and  reluctance  were  to  show  themselves,  it  was 
when  the  American  Army  was  departing  for  the  unknown 
shores  of  France. 

It  is  extraordinarily  gratifying,  then,  to  note  what  actually 
occurred.  It  may  be  years  before  the  exact  figures  of  American 
desertion  in  the  World  War  will  be  compiled;  but  we  can 
form  an  approximate  estimate  of  it  from  the  records  of  Camp 
Merritt.  The  camp  handled  in  all  about  50,000  casuals  of  the 
straggling  class.  Of  these  men,  a  great  number  were  the  merely 
unfortunate — soldiers  left  behind  in  hospitals  to  recover  from 
accidents  or  illness,  or  men  who  had  somehow  lost  themselves 
beside  the  way.  The  Camp  Merritt  figures  show  that  about 
half  the  stragglers,  or  25,000,  possessed  no  military  record 
papers  and  cards.  We  may  assume  that  most  men  of  this  class 
had  fallen  behind  by  their  own  fault.  The  Army  did  not  rate 
a  man  as  a  deserter  unless  he  was  absent  without  leave  for 
more  then  ten  days.  Of  the  prisoners  who  passed  through  the 
Camp  Merritt  stockade,  only  about  one-fifth  were  actual  de- 
serters. The  others  were  men  who  had  left  their  units  without 
permission,  and  the  great  majority  of  them,  after  short  ab- 
sences, had  returned  voluntarily  to  the  service.  Of  the  more 
than  1,500,000  men  who  went  to  France  via  New  York,  only 
5,000  remained  behind  and  were  apprehended  as  deserters. 

This  number  compares  favorably  with  the  desertions  from 
the  comparative  handful  of  American  volunteer  troops  who 
fought  in  the  Revolutionary  War.  There  were  more   than 


CASUALS  221 

5,000  deserters  from  the  Union  Army  in  the  debacle  which 
followed  Bull  Run.  In  fact,  no  American  volunteer  army  of 
the  past  was  nearly  so  steadfast  in  its  fidelity  and  courage  as 
the  force  which  fought  in  France.  Actual  desertion,  at  least 
on  this  side  of  the  ocean,  was  practically  an  invisible  quantity. 
No  doubt  the  superior  training  and  discipline  of  our  troops 
in  1918  kept  desertion  to  a  minimum,  for  this  capital  crime  of 
the  military  service  has  always  been  most  prevalent  among 
green  troops  and  troops  held  under  loose  restraint;  yet  some- 
thing must  be  said  for  the  spirit  of  the  soldiers. 

Of  the  prisoners  at  Camp  Merritt,  about  four  in  ten  were 
men  who  went  absent  without  leave  after  their  organizations 
reached  the  Port  of  Embarkation.  They  were  the  men  who 
could  not  withstand  the  temptations  of  the  city;  men  who 
allowed  themselves  to  be  persuaded  to  overstay  their  leaves, 
or  who  went  on  sprees  and  awoke  to  find  themselves  delinquent. 
On  the  theory  that  it  is  as  well  to  be  hanged  for  an  old  sheep 
as  a  lamb,  many  of  these  men  continued  A.  W.  O.  L.  until 
close  to  the  time  limit  at  which  desertion  begins  and  then 
returned  voluntarily  for  whatever  punishment  they  might  re- 
ceive. There  was  also  an  element  in  the  service  so  ignorant  as 
to  believe  that  if  they  took  French  leave  and  were  absent 
when  their  units  sailed,  they  could  then  safely  report  them- 
selves and  be  sent  to  prison  on  this  side  of  the  ocean,  thus 
escaping  foreign  service  altogether;  and  some  of  them  put  their 
theory  into  practice.  They  were  unaware  that  deserters  and 
men  absent  without  leave  were  always  forwarded  to  the 
A.  E.  F.  to  undergo  punishment  in  France. 

A  good  share  of  the  prisoners  in  the  stockade,  however, 
were  the  weak  and  the  unwise  and  the  homesick.  Upon  learn- 
ing that  their  organizations  were  scheduled  to  depart  from  the 
training  camps  for  the  port,  numerous  boys  took  the  long 
chance  of  returning  home  without  leave  to  say  good-bye — most 
of  them,  no  doubt,  hoping  and  expecting  to  catch  their  units 
before  they  embarked.  Some  of  those  who  went  absent  without 
leave  at  Camp  Merritt  eventually  turned  their  misdemeanor 
into  the  crime  of  desertion  by  remaining  away.  Immediately 


222  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

after  the  armistice  was  declared,  about  350  deserters  appeared 
at  Camp  Merritt  and  gave  themselves  up. 

Absenteeism  at  the  port  grew  so  serious  in  the  summer  of 
1918  that  the  commanding  general  issued  public  appeals  to 
the  people  of  New  York  not  to  tempt  soldiers  to  overstay 
leave,  and  to  help  men  to  return  if  they  were  so  intoxicated 
that  they  did  not  know  what  they  were  about.  On  one  occasion 
a  unit  of  1,800  troops,  when  it  checked  up  on  the  pier,  found 
300  men  missing.  There  were  numerous  instances  of  units 
sailing  minus  any  number  from  25  to  200  of  the  men  whom 
they  had  brought  to  the  port.  The  overpowering  fascination 
of  New  York  to  thousands  of  boys  who  had  never  seen  the 
city  before  was  accountable  for  a  large  part  of  the  absence 
without  leave  in  that  vicinity. 

At  first  the  Army  forwarded  prisoners  to  France,  there  to 
be  tried  by  their  own  organizations.  This  plan  turned  out  not 
feasible,  and  a  permanent  military  court  was  set  up  in  Camp 
Merritt  to  sit  every  day  and  dispose  of  cases.  It  had  little 
trouble  with  men  A.  W.  O.  L.  Most  of  these  culprits  came 
to  camp  voluntarily,  with  confessions  on  their  lips.  But  de- 
sertion was  a  different  matter.  In  time  of  war  it  was  a  capital 
crime,  and  a  trial  for  desertion  was  a  grave  affair.  The  com- 
petent witnesses  in  a  deserter's  case — the  comrades  and  officers 
of  the  man's  own  organization — were  all  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Atlantic.  When  it  was  found  impossible  to  convict  men 
of  desertion  in  the  Camp  Merritt  court,  the  regulations  were 
changed  to  send  alleged  deserters  to  the  A.  E.  F.  for  trial. 

When  a  man  was  brought  to  the  Camp  Merritt  stockade, 
the  officer  on  duty  there  issued  to  him  a  fatigue  uniform, 
assigned  him  to  quarters,  and  within  twenty-four  hours  had 
him  up  for  investigation  before  an  officer  who  conducted  a 
sort  of  preliminary  court.  This  examination  might  acquit  him 
or  even  release  him  with  a  warning,  if  the  offense  were  trivial ; 
or  it  might  hold  him  for  trial  by  court-martial.  In  the  second 
event,  he  went  before  the  court  immediately.  If  found  guilty, 
he  was  at  once  assigned  to  a  skeleton  company  within  the 
stockade.  A  prison  casual  company  consisted  of  sixty-six  men, 


CASUALS  223 

all  that  could  live  in  one  barrack  building.  As  soon  as  a  prison 
company  reached  its  full  strength,  it  was  sent  under  guard 
to  the  piers  and  embarked  upon  the  first  transport  which  had 
room  for  it. 

The  period  between  the  sentencing  of  a  man  by  the  court- 
martial  and  his  departure  for  Hoboken  in  an  overseas  prison 
company  was  not  often  longer  than  forty-eight  hours.  In  that 
interval  the  camp  made  out  his  service  records  as  best  it  could, 
issued  to  him  a  complete  overseas  equipment  just  as  if  he  were 
a  member  of  a  regular  organization,  and  restored  to  him  any 
property  which  he  had  abandoned  when  he  went  A.  W.  O.  L. 
He  traveled  to  France  as  a  prisoner  and  served  his  sentence 
there. 

The  stockade  guard  company  was  kept  busy  bringing  in 
prisoners  from  all  parts  of  the  country.  Its  members  traveled 
as  far  west  as  the  Pacific  coast.  The  actual  coward,  the  soldier 
whose  metal  was  dross,  was  extremely  rare;  yet  there  were  a 
few  whose  moral  nature  was  so  warped  that  they  preferred 
even  suicide  to  a  voyage  across  the  ocean.  Some  faltering 
spirits  simply  could  not  stand  the  gaff.  One  prisoner  who  was 
being  brought  to  Merritt  under  guard  threw  himself  from  the 
window  of  a  swiftly  moving  train.  The  fall  failed  to  kill  him, 
and  he  got  up  and  hanged  himself  to  a  telegraph  pole  with 
some  wire  which  he  found  beside  the  track.  Another  who  was 
marching  at  night  with  a  company  of  prisoners  from  Camp 
Merritt  to  Alpine  Landing  took  the  frightful  leap  over  the  edge 
of  the  Palisades.  In  the  darkness  his  deed  was  not  witnessed, 
nor  were  the  guards  able  to  tell  how  he  had  escaped.  Some 
days  later,  a  gathering  of  buzzards  caught  the  attention  of 
the  guardsmen.  They  gave  search  and  learned  the  truth  about 
his  escape.  Occasionally  men  would  disappear  after  the  ferry- 
boat left  Alpine  Landing  and  before  it  touched  the  pier  in 
the  lower  river.  These  desperate  individuals  had  jumped  over- 
board. Some  of  them  perhaps  succeeded  in  swimming  to  shore ; 
others  never  made  it.  Intermittently  during  the  period  of 
heaviest  embarkation  the  watermen  of  New  York  fished  the 
bodies  of  dead  soldiers  out  of  the  river.  A  few  soldiers,  when 


224  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  transports  were  moving  from  the  piers  down  the  bay  to 
the  rendezvous  of  the  convoy,  leaped  to  death  in  the  deep 
water. 

But  for  every  such  dark  incident,  there  were  a  dozen  of 
another  sort — the  stalwart  youth  condemned  by  some  final 
inspection  to  remain  behind  because  of  alienage  or  physical 
disability,  standing  before  the  embarkation  officer  with  un- 
ashamed tears  flowing  down  his  cheeks  as  he  pleaded  for  the 
chance  to  share  with  his  comrades  the  dangers  ahead.  This  was 
a  common  sight  at  Hoboken  in  those  dramatic  days.  The 
Government  knew  how  rare  were  desertions  and  cowardice, 
how  frequent  the  exhibition  of  valor;  and  it  reposed  a  mighty 
faith  in  the  moral  stamina  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Forces. 


From  An   Official  Motion  Picture 


CASUALS  AT  CAMP  MERRITT  RECEIVING 
EMBARKATION  INSTRUCTIONS 


From  An  Offinu!  M.iim  Picture 

ENTRANCE  TO  STOCKADE,  CAMP  MERRITT 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

LEVIATHAN  LEAVING  FOR  FRANCE,  AUGUST  3,  191J 
WITH  NEARLY   11,000  YANKEE  TROOPS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

ON  ONE  OF  LEVIATHAN'S  DECKS,  AUGUST  3,   1918 


CHAPTER  XVII 
THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE 

THE  New  York  Port  of  Embarkation  antedated  the 
Embarkation  Service,  of  which  it  was  an  integral  part 
during  so  much  of  the  period  of  overseas  travel.  The 
Port  of  Embarkation,  we  have  seen,  was  created  as  a  military 
entity  in  July,  1917,  a  few  days  after  the  first  convoy  had 
departed  for  France;  but  it  was  not  until  August  8  that  the 
Embarkation  Service  came  into  existence. 

It  may  confuse  the  civilian  reader  to  find  the  function  of 
troop  transportation  carried  on,  as  it  was  during  our  hostilities 
with  Germany,  by  the  General  Staff.  The  layman  thinks  of  a 
staff  as  an  advisory  and  not  as  an  executive  and  operating 
body.  Such,  in  theory,  is  our  General  Staff — a  deviser  and 
creator  of  plans  and  policies,  not  the  organ  for  executing 
them — and  such  it  was  in  fact,  before  the  declaration  of  war 
in  1917.  The  expansion  of  the  American  General  Staff  as  an 
operating  agency,  its  assumption  of  duties  which  logically  and 
normally  fell  to  the  administrative  branches  of  the  Army — 
this  is  a  significant  chapter  of  American  military  history.  Some 
day,  no  doubt,  wise  men  will  make  studies  of  this  growth  and 
draw  conclusions  therefrom;  but  the  province  of  this  narra- 
tive is  only  to  chronicle  the  facts  of  the  expansion  in  so  far 
as  they  pertain  to  the  transportation  of  troops  and  supplies. 

In  theory,  the  General  Staff  in  Washington  is  the  Army's 
executive  committee.  It  may  be  likened  to  the  board  of 
directors  of  a  railroad.  The  directors  are  men  of  deep  expe- 
rience and  skill.  In  their  meetings  they  lay  broad  plans  for 
the  growth  and  efficient  administration  of  the  property.  But  it 
is  not  their  function  to  carry  out  these  policies  in  executive 
administration.  That  duty  falls  to  the  operating  staff  of  the 


226  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

road — its  line  organization,  to  continue  the  military  analogy — 
which  consists  of  the  railroad's  president  and  his  assistants, 
the  general  superintendent,  the  general  freight  agent,  the  gen- 
eral passenger  agent,  the  general  superintendent  of  rolling 
stock,  the  general  superintendent  of  motive  power,  the  general 
superintendent  of  maintenance  of  way,  and  others,  each  assist- 
ant being  in  actual  executive  control  of  some  necessary  branch 
of  railroading.  In  the  Army  this  organization  is,  or  rather  was, 
duplicated.  The  Commanding  General  in  the  field  (or  the 
Adjutant  General  in  time  of  peace)  acted  as  the  railroad 
president  does;  the  Chief  of  Staff  was  the  chairman  of  the 
board  of  directors. 

Up  to  the  sixth  day  of  April,  1917,  the  General  Staff  con- 
sisted of  ( 1 )  a  small  conclave  of  officers  on  duty  at  the  office 
of  the  Chief  of  Staff  in  the  War  Department,  and  of  (2)  a 
group  of  military  academicians  gathered  together  for  research 
at  the  Army  War  College  in  Washington,  and  known  col- 
lectively as  the  War  Plans  Division  of  the  General  Staff.  The 
War  Plans  Division  had  its  chief,  a  secretary,  and  certain 
committees,  which  might  be  likened  to  the  several  faculties  of 
a  university.  Each  committee  conducted  some  special  branch 
of  investigation.  There  was,  for  instance,  the  Organization 
Committee,  which,  through  its  observers  stationed  with  the 
armies  of  other  nations  and  through  its  own  studies  of  domes- 
tic conditions,  from  time  to  time  recommended  changes  and 
improvements  in  the  organization  of  the  American  Army.  It 
was  the  Organization  Committee  which,  in  conference  with 
the  British  and  French  officers  sent  to  America  with  the  first 
visiting  missions,  drew  up  for  General  Pershing  the  plan, 
hereinbefore  mentioned,  for  the  organization  of  an  expedition- 
ary division  with  enlarged  companies  and  other  innovations  in 
harmony  with  the  organization  of  the  French  and  British 
armies. 

Another  committee  at  the  War  College  was  the  Operations 
Committee,  whose  responsibility  was  to  work  out  plans  for 
our  actual  field  operations,  including  the  maneuvering  and 
disposal  of  troops  at  the  front  and  their  transportation  to  the 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  227 

scene  of  action.  In  years  past,  this  committee  had  built  tenta- 
tive plans  for  the  manipulation  of  American  forces  against 
various  specific  but  supposititious  enemies,  so  that  an  unex- 
pected emergency  might  not  catch  the  United  States  strate- 
gically unprepared.  The  Operations  Committee  kept  a  vigilant 
eye  on  international  politics;  and  any  threat  of  possible  future 
complications,  no  matter  how  remote,  was  sufficient  to  cause 
it  to  inaugurate  studies  and  develop  plans  for  meeting  any 
conceivable  situation.  When  the  World  War  broke  out  and 
threatened  more  strongly  month  by  month  to  involve  America, 
this  committee  concentrated  upon  methods  for  the  possible 
employment  of  our  forces  in  Europe. 

A  third  committee  at  the  War  College  studied  the  multi- 
farious problem  of  equipping  our  Army  with  clothing  and 
ordnance  and  all  the  other  supplies  necessary  to  a  great  force. 
A  fourth  formulated  systems  for  training  soldiers.  Out  of  this 
group  came  the  projects  for  universal  training  considered  by 
the  Government  before  the  outbreak  of  hostilities.  A  fifth 
committee  procured  military  intelligence;  it  was  this  agency 
which  employed  the  services  of  our  military  attaches  in  many 
lands. 

When  war  was  declared,  this  whole  War  Plans  Division 
threw  itself  into  the  task  of  laying  down  a  prospectus  for 
raising,  training,  equipping,  and  transporting  an  army  of 
forty-two  divisions,  with  their  necessary  maintenance  troops. 
Such  a  force  would  number,  roughly,  1,600,000  men.  It  will 
be  seen  that  this  program  was  considerably  in  advance  of  any 
conceived  at  that  time  (the  spring  of  1917)  by  the  line 
organization  of  the  Army.  In  fact,  General  Pershing,  in  Octo- 
ber, 1917,  when  he  sent  his  first  great  requisition  for  troops, 
called  for  a  force  that  should  consist  of  but  thirty  divisions, 
with  the  appropriate  army  troops,  corps  troops,  and  troops 
for  the  line  of  communication.  It  was  the  province  of  the  War 
Plans  Division  to  step  out  in  this  fashion  in  advance  of  con- 
temporary needs ;  to  be  ready  with  practical  measures  when  the 
Government's  power  to  organize  troops  had  reached  greater 
stages  of  development. 


228  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

It  was  soon  discovered  that  this  closet  organization,  the 
War  Plans  Division,  was  too  remote  from  the  control  of  the 
Army  to  be  effective;  and  little  by  little,  at  first  by  the  inclu- 
sion of  liaison  officers  within  General  Staff  headquarters,  these 
committees  were  brought  out  of  the  War  College,  until  at 
length,  vastly  expanded  in  personnel  and  power,  they  became 
independent  divisions  of  the  General  Staff  itself.  The  Opera- 
tions Committee,  for  instance,  grew  into  the  powerful  Opera- 
tions Division  of  the  General  Staff,  an  organization  whose 
behests  set  in  motion  the  machinery  of  the  draft,  built  up  the 
combat  divisions  at  the  training  camps,  called  into  being  the 
bewildering  numbers  of  special  troop  organizations,  dictated 
the  transportation  of  all  units,  and  fixed  priorities  in  overseas 
travel.  The  Operations  Division  also  supervised  the  distribu- 
tion of  supplies.  The  Equipment  Committee  eventually  united 
with  the  whole  quartermaster  branch  of  the  Army  to  become 
the  great  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  Division  of  the  Gen- 
eral Staff,  which  by  that  time  had  actually  assumed  the  duties 
of  buying  all  army  supplies  (except  technical  equipment)  and 
of  transporting  supplies  and  men. 

By  the  close  of  1917,  the  General  Staff,  without  losing  any 
of  its  advisory  powers,  had  taken  on  vast  responsibilities  in 
the  actual  executive  operation  of  many  of  the  most  vital  func- 
tions of  warfare.  Herein  our  General  Staff  differed  from  the 
staffs  of  other  modern  armies,  for  they  remained  only  advisory. 
It  was  natural,  even  inevitable,  that  our  Staff  should  branch 
out  in  these  administrative  directions.  It  included  within  itself 
the  very  men  who  knew  most  about  these  subjects  of  transport 
and  purchase.  The  expedient  thing  for  the  Staff  to  do  was  to 
assume  direct  charge  of  the  great  supply  and  traffic  enterprises 
made  necessary  by  the  war,  instead  of  creating  new  organiza- 
tions for  these  purposes  and  instructing  them  afterward. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  understand  the  place  of  the 
Embarkation  Service  in  this  system.  In  early  August,  1917, 
Major  General  Bliss  was  Acting  Chief  of  Staff.  His  assistant 
was  Major  General  Keman.  At  this  time  the  Staff  was  attempt- 
ing, through  the  Operations  Committee,  merely  to  coordinate 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  229 

the  movement  of  troops  and  supplies;  that  is,  it  had  no  opera- 
tive powers  in  this  quarter.  Each  military  bureau  still  retained 
authority  to  transport  its  own  troops  and  supplies  as  it  chose, 
and  each  conducted  its  business  with  heedless  disregard  of  its 
interference  with  the  affairs  of  others.  General  Kernan  felt 
that  the  War  Department  needed  a  central  agency  to  coordi- 
nate the  traffic,  or  at  least  that  part  of  it  which  involved  troops 
and  supplies  approaching  the  coast  for  transfer  overseas;  and 
in  this  judgment  General  Bliss  concurred.  And  he  made  his  con- 
currence effective  by  ordering  the  creation,  within  the  General 
Staff,  of  a  section  known  as  the  Embarkation  Branch.  At  this 
time  the  Operations  and  Equipment  Committees  were  staff 
branches;  and  so  the  Embarkation  Branch  was  born  on  a 
parity  with  them.  The  blood  brotherhood  served  our  military 
transportation  in  good  stead  later  on,  when  the  success  of  the 
system  depended  crucially  upon  the  perfection  of  the  rap- 
prochement between  the  Operations  Division  of  the  General 
Staff  and  the  Embarkation  Service,  then  a  branch  of  the  Pur- 
chase, Storage,  and  Traffic  Division  of  the  General  Staff.  The 
complete  harmony  established  in  these  days  of  swaddling 
clothes  continued  to  the  end  between  the  agency  which  ordered 
embarkation  and  the  service  which  actually  conducted  it. 

General  Bliss  made  General  Kernan  the  Chief  of  the  Em- 
barkation Branch.  For  his  assistant,  the  Staff  went  over  into 
one  of  the  operating  branches  of  the  Army,  the  Quartermaster 
Department,  and  therefrom  picked  an  officer  who  had  had 
greater  recent  experience  in  the  transportation  of  troops  and 
supplies  than  any  other  man  in  the  Army,  Colonel  Chauncey  B. 
Baker.  The  administrative  agency  of  military  transportation 
prior  to  1917  was  the  Transportation  Division  of  the  Quar- 
termaster Department.  Colonel  Baker  was  chief  of  this  divi- 
sion. His  most  practical  experience  in  overseas  transportation 
had  been  gained  when  the  American  military  and  naval  forces 
occupied  Vera  Cruz  in  1914.  He  had  proceeded  to  Vera  Cruz 
with  the  first  ship  and  acted  as  base  quartermaster  there  until 
our  forces  were  withdrawn. 


230  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Still  a  third  officer  joined  the  new  organization;  a  man 
whose  personality  was  later  to  be  so  impressed  upon  our  trans- 
portation history — for  he  was  destined  to  become  the  chief 
figure  in  it — that  it  is  of  interest  to  examine  his  career  in  more 
detail. 

When  the  United  States  declared  war  against  Spain  and  the 
country  was  aflame  with  war  enthusiasm,  a  young  civil  engi- 
neer named  Frank  T.  Hines  enlisted  in  the  United  States 
Volunteer  Army  as  a  private.  He  found  a  place  in  a  battery 
of  field  artillery  which  was  proceeding  to  the  Philippine 
Islands.  Out  of  its  campaign  there  he  emerged  a  few  months 
later  with  a  record  for  courage  and  ability  and  a  commission 
as  second  lieutenant.  One  duty  after  another  kept  him  in  the 
uniform  until,  at  the  end  of  two  years,  he  decided  to  make  the 
profession  of  arms  his  own.  He  took  up  various  technical 
branches  of  the  service,  working  in  the  graduate  army  schools, 
until  he  had  made  himself  an  electrical  and  mechanical  engi- 
neer, a  captain  in  the  Coast  Artillery  Corps,  and  a  specialist  in 
the  location  and  equipment  of  coastal  fortifications. 

The  Government  of  Greece,  no  doubt  anticipating  the  clash 
of  arms  that  was  to  resound  throughout  Europe,  asked  the 
American  Government  to  lend  it  an  officer  to  supervise  the 
strengthening  of  the  Hellenic  coast  defenses;  and  for  this 
mission  the  War  Department  nominated  Captain  Hines.  He 
was  in  Greece  when  Germany  began  her  invasion  of  Belgium. 
He  stuck  to  his  work  until,  one  day,  he  discovered  that  com- 
mercial travel  at  sea  had  ceased.  His  job  had  come  automati- 
cally to  an  end.  The  last  passenger  vessel  for  the  United 
States  had  departed;  the  steamship  companies  could  promise 
no  other.  On  board  one  of  the  wallowing  tubs  of  the  ^gean, 
Captain  Hines  crossed  to  Brindisi,  on  the  Italian  boot-heel, 
and  thence  made  his  way  to  Naples,  where  an  important  duty 
faced  him. 

Europe  was  crowded  with  American  refugees,  many  of 
whom  were  women  and  children.  They  were  stranded,  prac- 
tically without  funds  and  without  hope  of  getting  home.  Their 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  231 

immediate  resources  were  generally  in  the  form  of  letters  of 
credit — many  of  them  letters  of  credit  issued  by  German 
steamship  companies.  In  the  financial  paralysis  of  those  first 
astonishing  weeks  of  war,  all  instruments  of  international 
credit,  whether  issued  by  German  institutions  or  not,  had 
collapsed.  An  order  for  thousands  of  dollars  was  not  good  for 
a  night's  lodging.  The  State  Department  stepped  in  at  this 
juncture  to  rescue  the  unhappy  American  victims  of  the  cata- 
clysm. The  Secretary  of  State  cabled  to  our  ambassadors  and 
ministers  in  Europe  to  manage  the  relief  work  in  their  respec- 
tive jurisdictions;  and  the  advices  empowered  them  to  com- 
mand the  services  of  any  American  army  officers  who  were 
traveling  in  Europe.  Mr.  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  the  American 
ambassador  at  Rome,  straightway  discovered  Captain  Hines 
and  placed  him  in  charge  of  the  work  in  Italy. 

There  were  some  3,100  American  tourists  caught  in  Italy, 
and  they  were  in  a  wretched  plight.  Most  of  them  were  entirely 
without  money,  living  at  inns  and  hotels  solely  on  their  verbal 
assurances  that  everything  must  come  out  all  right.  Some  of 
the  women  were  half  hysterical  with  fear,  and  even  the  more 
courageous  and  hopeful  found  the  outlook  anything  but 
bright. 

It  was  impossible,  in  this  dangerous  time,  for  the  American 
Government  to  induce  foreign  steamship  companies  to  risk 
operating  their  vessels  across  the  Atlantic.  The  naval  situation 
was  still  uncertain;  German  raiding  ships,  and  even  German 
ships  of  war,  were  abroad  on  the  seas.  Moreover,  the  chief 
transatlantic  lines  were  owned  by  the  very  nations  which  were 
at  war,  whose  first  steps  had  been  to  commandeer  all  tonnage 
that  could  be  used  in  the  transportation  of  troops  and  supplies. 
America  then  conceived  the  plan  of  building  temporary  pas- 
senger accommodations  on  several  of  our  transports  and  naval 
cruisers  and  sending  these  vessels  abroad  with  gold  for  the 
financial  relief  of  the  stranded  and  with  quarters  for  their 
return  passage.  The  Government  actually  carried  out  this  plan, 
sending,  among  other  ships,  the  cruiser  Tennessee  to  Europe. 
By  the  use  of  her  own  ships  and  by  crowding  full  the  few 


232  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

British  and  French  liners  which  presently  ventured  to  resume 
operations,  America  managed  in  four  or  five  months  to  gather 
home  her  hapless  nationals. 

While  the  improvised  American  relief  organizations  in  other 
countries  were  beseeching  the  home  Government  for  passenger 
vessels,  Captain  Hines,  in  Italy,  was  ready  with  a  plan  which 
made  no  demand  upon  outside  help.  Searching  the  Italian 
harbors,  he  had  found  in  Naples  and  Genoa  four  large,  com- 
modious passenger  vessels,  the  property  of  an  Italian  trading 
concern.  They  were  immigrant  ships  in  the  South  American 
trade.  Not  even  a  sanguine  person  could  have  called  them 
palatial  in  their  appointments,  for  their  accommodations  were 
steerage  throughout,  except  for  a  few  second-class  cabins  for 
the  wealthier  colonists.  But  Captain  Hines  saw  that  he  could 
quickly  make  the  ships  serviceable  for  the  emergency  work  in 
hand.  Aided  by  the  backing  of  the  American  ambassador,  he 
struck  a  bargain  with  the  company,  got  the  four  ships,  tore 
out  their  steerage  accommodations,  and  built  them  full  of 
temporary  staterooms.  While  this  work  was  going  on,  the 
officer,  assisted  by  the  American  consul  at  Naples,  arranged 
with  the  Italian  banks  a  credit  which  gave  him  money  to  settle 
the  bills  of  the  refugees  and  buy  their  tickets  home.  Six  weeks 
later  the  last  of  the  3,  loo  Americans  sailed  from  Italy  for  New 
York,  and  in  comfortable  accommodations,  too.  At  this  early 
date  not  one  of  the  American  vessels  then  being  outfitted  for 
similar  work  had  yet  left  the  home  shipyards.  Our  refugees  in 
Italy  were  all  in  the  bosoms  of  their  families  relating  their 
adventures  while  the  relief  of  those  in  other  countries  was  still 
a  vexing  problem. 

This  episode  proved  to  be  the  turning  point  in  Captain 
Hines's  career,  for  it  marked  him  as  an  executive  who  could 
step  out  firmly  on  unbeaten  paths.  He  was  acting  as  a  member 
of  a  Coast  Artillery  board  at  Fortress  Monroe,  Virginia,  when 
the  United  States  declared  war  against  Germany.  The  Army 
Staff  at  once  reached  out  for  him  and  assigned  him  to  the 
Equipment  Committee  at  the  Army  War  College;  and  in 
August,  when  the  Staff  created  its  Embarkation  Branch,  Gen- 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  233 

eral  Bliss  made  Captain  Hines  chief  of  staff  in  the  new  organi- 
zation, in  which  capacity  he  acted  as  executive  officer  in  the 
first  attempt  at  centralized  control  of  embarkation. 

The  Embarkation  Branch  began  its  existence  with  the  three 
officers  mentioned,  General  Kernan,  Colonel  Baker,  and  Cap- 
tain Hines,  and  with  a  single  civilian  clerk.  The  first  thing 
that  attracted  the  attention  of  the  junior  officer  of  this  group 
was  the  slowness  of  the  War  Department  in  securing  vessels 
for  the  transatlantic  shipment  of  the  great  supplies  of  mate- 
rials for  dock-building  which  the  Engineer  Corps  was  accumu- 
lating at  Jacksonville  and  Fernandino,  Florida.  In  many  ways 
this  was  the  most  vital  cargo  that  could  cross  the  ocean  at  that 
time,  for  until  we  had  provided  adequate  port  facilities  in 
France  the  growth  of  the  A.  E.  F.  must  inevitably  be  slow.  On 
the  advice  of  Captain  Hines,  Colonel  Baker  went  to  the  United 
States  Shipping  Board  and  secured  its  promise  to  allocate  a 
greater  amount  of  tonnage  to  the  engineering  cargo. 

In  August,  1917,  the  competitive  system  of  military  trans- 
portation was  in  full  swing.  Every  production  bureau  in  the 
War  Department  was  trying  to  be  the  first  to  deposit  its  sup- 
plies in  France,  and  every  special  corps  vied  with  the  others 
to  get  its  troops  shipped  overseas.  By  September  the  Embarka- 
tion Branch  had  established  a  port-release  system  of  a  sort  de- 
signed to  control  the  flow  of  export  army  freight  tonnage.  Yet 
the  Embarkation  Branch  was  still  merely  an  advisory  body, 
still  in  essence  a  staff  organization ;  and  its  advisory  system  of 
release  was  not  sufficient  to  control  the  congestion  that  steadily 
grew  at  the  seaboard.  Captain  Hines  wrote  for  the  Chief  of 
Staff  a  memorandum  to  that  effect,  in  which  he  stated  that 
the  embryonic  service,  though  it  might  exercise  some  degree 
of  regulation  of  purely  war  department  freight,  had  no  con- 
trol over  domestic  shipments  to  the  New  York  Quartermaster 
Depot,  and  none  over  the  traffic  in  munitions  and  supplies 
obtained  in  the  United  States  by  the  Allies.  War  department 
export  freight  was  as  yet  only  a  small  percentage  of  the  total 
volume  of  traffic  moving  into  New  York.  No  matter  how 
much  this  advisory  body  could  systematize  the  military  freight 


234  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

movement,  it  could  not  forestall  the  general  traffic  confusion 
then  imminent. 

The  aftermath  of  this  memorandum  was  the  creation  of  the 
so-called  Coordination  Committee.  This  was  a  committee  made 
up  of  representatives  of  the  railroads  interested  in  traffic  at 
New  York,  together  with  the  representatives  of  the  British 
and  French  Missions,  the  War  Department  itself,  the  Navy, 
the  Shipping  Board,  and  what  was  then  the  germ  of  the  future 
United  States  Food  Administration.  This  committee  met  once 
a  week  with  the  American  Railway  Association's  Committee 
of  Five  in  Washington.  These  meetings  represented  the  Gov- 
ernment's first  attempt  to  regulate  all  traffic.  By  this  time  every 
official  agency,  including  the  railroads  and  the  representatives 
of  the  Allies,  had  established  its  own  independent  release  sys- 
tem at  the  port  of  New  York.  The  various  releases  were 
brought  each  week  before  the  Coordination  Committee,  which 
attempted  to  give  precedence  to  them  in  proper  order. 

The  intention  of  the  committee  was  good,  but  its  authority 
was  weak.  Each  representative  on  the  committee  possessed 
executive  control  of  shipments  for  his  own  department;  but 
the  committee  itself  lacked  that  overlordship  which  alone 
could  have  made  it  an  effective  power.  A  few  weeks  later  it 
gave  way  to  the  famous  Priorities  Committee  of  the  Council 
of  National  Defense,  headed  by  Judge  Lovett,  the  eminent 
railroad  man.  This  committee,  which  acted  in  coordination 
with  the  American  Railway  Association,  possessed  in  fact,  if 
not  by  actual  law,  the  authority  to  control  freight  movements 
by  rail.  It  did  succeed  to  some  extent  in  gaining  upon  the  con- 
gestion at  the  port,  but  it  was  deficient  in  the  summary  power 
to  deal  with  shipping  at  its  points  of  origin — which  power,  as 
the  event  proved,  was  the  sine  qua  non  of  effective  traffic 
control. 

WTien  the  severe  winter  of  1917-1918  closed  in,  it  brought 
a  traffic  paralysis  utterly  appalling  to  those  in  a  position  to 
observe  its  effect  upon  overseas  shipping.  The  Government 
promptly  seized  the  railroads — an  act  which,  as  we  have  re- 
lated, gave  the  War  Department  its  opportunity  to  establish 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  235 

the  Inland  Traffic  Service,  one  of  the  great  agencies  which 
composed  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic. 
Shortly  before  this  event,  even,  it  had  become  evident  that 
firm-handed  centralized  control  was  necessary,  not  only  in  the 
shipment  of  supplies,  but  equally  in  the  whole  direction  of 
the  supply  enterprise;  and  the  result  was  the  immediate  crea- 
tion of  the  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  Division  of  the 
General  Staff.  The  direction  of  this  centralized  supply  agency 
demanded  an  executive  of  qualifications  which  few  men  pos- 
sessed— courage  in  shouldering  responsibility  and  a  willingness 
to  cut  comers  and  drive  through  obstacles  to  any  desired  end. 
For  this  post  the  War  Department  selected  Major  General 
George  W.  Goethals,  who  had  built  the  Panama  Canal,  the 
largest  work  ever  undertaken  by  the  Government  before  1917. 
Prior  to  this  appointment.  General  Goethals  had  been  Acting 
Quartermaster  General.  He  brought  into  the  Division  of  Pur- 
chase, Storage,  and  Traffic  the  new  Inland  Traffic  Service, 
and  took  over  also  the  Embarkation  Branch  of  the  Staff, 
raising  it  to  the  status  of  an  independent  service.  Thus,  in 
addition  to  his  other  powers.  General  Goethals,  with  both  the 
Inland  Traffic  Service  (rail)  and  the  Embarkation  Service 
(port  and  ocean)  under  his  jurisdiction,  became  the  master 
of  military  transportation.  Of  the  two  traffic  services,  the 
Embarkation  Service  was  the  greater,  for  the  Inland  Traffic 
Service  maintained  no  control  over  any  activity  of  the  Em- 
barkation Service,  whereas  the  Embarkation  Service  was  dic- 
tator to  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  in  one  of  its  most  important 
operations — the  transportation  of  troops  and  supplies  to  the 
seaports. 

But  there  was  one  significant  development  which  we  have 
still  to  mention.  In  the  autumn  of  1917  General  Kernan  was 
assigned  to  duty  in  France.  Colonel  Baker,  now  wearing  the 
stars  of  a  brigadier  general,  was  made  chief  of  the  Embarka- 
tion Branch  of  the  Staff.  Captain  Hines,  who  had  become 
Major  Hines,  was  appointed  assistant  chief.  General  Goethals 
found  this  organization  when  he  took  charge.  It  did  not  take 
the  canal-builder  long  to  discover  that  the  embarkation  control 


236  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

had  not  been  functioning  as  it  should.  General  Goethals  attri- 
buted its  ineffectiveness  to  the  lack  of  a  practical  shipping  man 
at  the  head.  Therefore  he  transferred  General  Baker  to  another 
branch  of  the  military  service  and,  during  the  interval  of 
several  weeks  in  which  he  was  hunting  for  the  practical  ship- 
ping man  to  be  the  civilian  head  of  the  Embarkation  Service, 
left  Major  Hines  in  charge  as  acting  chief.  Major  Hines 
seized  the  opportunity  to  upset  completely  the  organization 
of  the  Embarkation  Service  as  created  by  General  Baker  and 
to  remodel  it  according  to  his  own  ideas. 

In  January,  1918,  General  Goethals  found  his  man.  He 
was  Mr.  J.  L.  Lilly,  of  the  ocean  shipping  concern  of  Norton, 
Lilly  &  Company.  General  Goethals  made  Mr.  Lilly  Chief 
of  Embarkation,  but  retained  Major  Hines,  who  by  this  time 
was  a  lieutenant  colonel,  as  assistant  chief.  Mr.  Lilly  accepted 
the  appointment,  took  his  place  in  the  Embarkation  Service, 
signed  the  official  communications,  and  studied  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Embarkation  Service  to  analyze  its  weakness  and 
its  strength.  Five  days  later  he  went  to  General  Goethals  to 
express  his  conviction  that  he  could  best  serve  the  Government 
by  acting  as  a  subordinate  in  the  Embarkation  Service.  He  told 
General  Goethals  that  even  his  long  experience  could  con- 
tribute no  suggestion  for  improving  the  system  which  Lieu- 
tenant Colonel  Hines  had  built,  and  he  strongly  urged  that 
Hines  be  made  Chief  of  Embarkation  and  given  a  free  hand 
in  the  direction  of  the  service. 

General  Goethals  acted  at  once  upon  this  advice.  He  made 
Lieutenant  Colonel  Hines  Chief  of  Embarkation,  and  Mr. 
Lilly  went  to  the  Port  at  New  York,  there  to  serve  in  several 
important  capacities  throughout  the  rest  of  the  embarkation 
period.  A  few  weeks  later  Lieutenant  Colonel  Hines  was  pro- 
moted to  a  full  colonelcy,  and  in  April,  1918,  he  was  made 
a  brigadier  general,  having  advanced  to  that  eminence  from 
the  rank  of  captain  within  eight  months.  General  Hines  con- 
tinued to  serve  as  Chief  of  Embarkation  until  after  the  armi- 
stice. Then  occurred  a  development  contemplated  before  the 
cessation  of  hostilities :  one  which,  even  had  the  war  continued. 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  237 

would  undoubtedly  have  come  to  pass  as  it  did.  In  December, 
1918,  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  and  the  Embarkation  Ser- 
vice were  merged  in  a  single  organization  known  as  the  Trans- 
portation Service,  and  General  Hines  took  command  as  chief 
of  it. 

Second  in  importance  only  to  the  actual  maneuvering  of 
the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  in  the  field  was  the  trans- 
portation of  the  Army.  Indeed,  it  will  probably  always  remain 
a  subject  of  at  least  academic  dispute  which  was  the  greater 
triumph  of  American  prowess — the  transportation  of  the  two 
million  men  to  France  in  little  more  than  a  year,  or  the  maneu- 
vering of  that  force  in  France.  We  are  safe  in  saying  that  these 
enterprises  were  easily  the  two  most  momentous  episodes  in 
the  history  of  our  Army  in  the  World  War. 

The  abrupt  rise  of  a  relatively  obscure  captain  of  the  Coast 
Artillery  to  the  command  of  this  vital  service  was  only  another 
instance  of  the  devastation  wrought  by  war  within  the  estab- 
lished military  bureaus.  It  is  no  derogation  from  the  inherent 
ability  of  many  officers  who  for  years  prior  to  1917  had  held 
some  of  the  chief  posts  in  the  military  service,  to  emphasize 
the  bare  fact  that  the  great  test  of  the  war  unseated  those 
officers  and,  often,  raised  to  their  places  men  theretofore  com- 
paratively unknown.  Those  of  extended  experience  in  army 
bureaus,  no  matter  how  great  their  original  stock  of  initiative 
or  native  ability,  become  chained  by  long  association  to  regu- 
lation and  precedent.  There  is  no  help  for  it;  it  is  so  in  every 
army.  The  system  will  take  the  most  individual  of  men  and 
slowly  but  surely  mold  him  into  the  common  form.  When  the 
great  emergency  comes,  such  men  often  find  themselves  too 
timorous,  too  fearful  of  transcending  custom,  to  make  execu- 
tives of  the  best  type.  When  a  nation  is  committed  to  a  strug- 
gle for  existence,  only  a  man  impatient  of  hampering  custom 
is  likely  to  carry  a  great  project  through  to  success.  Such  a 
man  was  General  Goethals,  and  such  was  General  Hines.  The 
very  freshness  of  these  men  in  their  work,  their  lack  of  previous 
intimate  contact  with  the  red  tape  and  machinery  of  the  war 
bureaus,  fused  with  their  native  ability,  judgment,  and  de- 


238  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE     . 

termination  to  make  them  successful  executives.  They  were 
bold  in  assuming  responsibilities,  willing  to  strike  out  in  new 
directions  without  driving  their  superiors  to  distraction  by 
continual  requests  for  authority  to  act. 

General  Hines's  first  act  as  Chief  of  Embarkation  was  typi- 
cal of  his  whole  administration.  Up  to  this  time  the  Embarka- 
tion Service  had  been  going  to  the  Shipping  Board  hat  in  hand 
and  deferentially  requesting  its  quota  of  ships  for  war  depart- 
ment freight.  General  Hines  did  not  request,  but — none  the  less 
politely,  of  course — demanded  all  the  vessels  the  Shipping 
Board  possessed.  To  be  sure,  he  did  not  get  them — he  scarcely 
expected  that,  for  other  important  functions  of  the  Govern- 
ment had  to  be  served.  There  had  to  be  ships  in  the  Chilean 
nitrate  trade,  ships  to  bring  the  indispensable  manganese  ore 
from  Brazil  and  Cuba,  ships  in  the  service  of  the  Food  Ad- 
ministration carrying  relief  to  Belgium  and  other  parts  of 
stricken  Europe,  ships  placed  at  the  service  of  the  Swiss  to 
keep  them  content  in  their  neutrality.  But  by  demanding  all 
the  tonnage  in  sight.  General  Hines  acquired  a  greater  portion 
of  it  than  he  could  have  got  by  giving  obsequious  considera- 
tion to  these  other  needs. 

When  he  took  office  there  was  still  a  great  accumulation 
of  engineering  materials  at  the  seaports — materials  for  use  in 
construction  of  docks  at  Bordeaux,  St.  Nazaire,  and  other 
French  ports  assigned  to  the  A.  E.  F.  The  additional  shipping 
placed  at  General  Hines's  disposal  soon  cleared  away  this 
accumulation.  Had  the  Engineer  Corps  been  able  to  prosecute 
its  work  on  the  French  ports  at  the  rate  expected  in  the  summer 
of  1917,  the  Embarkation  Service  would  have  scored  a  failure 
to  deliver  the  material.  So  narrow  was  the  margin  of  success 
that  abilities  of  even  the  first  brilliancy  needed  the  intervention 
of  pure  good  fortune. 

Meanwhile  certain  activities  within  the  Embarkation  Ser- 
vice had  now  expanded  to  great  importance.  The  Embarka- 
tion Branch  at  first  kept  manifests  of  export  freight  which 
showed  only  the  general  content  of  packages  shipped  abroad. 
Soon  there  began  to  come  from  General  Pershing  cabled  de- 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  239 

mands  for  specific  information  about  the  shipment  of  various 
consignments.  The  Embarkation  Branch  could  not  answer  such 
questions,  nor  could  it  help  the  A.  E.  F.  trace  any  missing 
supplies,  because  its  records  did  not  contain  the  necessary 
information.  To  supply  this  defect  the  Branch  set  up  its  cargo 
section.  The  cargo  section  kept  detailed  records  of  the  contents 
of  every  package  sent  to  the  A.  E.  F.  as  well  as  of  the  quanti- 
ties and  kinds  of  all  bulk  freight.  Under  the  direction  of 
Major  Morse,  a  former  official  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad, 
this  work  grew  until  it  required  the  services  of  180  clerks. 
Eventually  the  section  kept  track  of  all  important  supplies 
from  the  moment  they  were  packed  in  the  shipping  rooms  of 
American  factories. 

A  similar  system  was  adopted  in  the  movement  of  troops. 
Whenever  General  Pershing  cabled  for  troop  units,  of  what- 
ever branch  of  the  service,  copies  of  his  cablegrams  went  to  the 
Embarkation  Service,  where  the  proper  employees  placed  in 
the  record  index  a  card  for  each  unit  requested.  When  the  first 
entry  was  made  on  a  card,  there  was  as  yet  no  such  unit  in 
existence :  there  was  only  a  requisition  for  it.  Weeks  or  months 
later,  such  a  unit  would  be  organized.  The  Operations  Divi- 
sion of  the  General  Staff  would  place  it  on  the  priority  list 
for  overseas  transport  and  send  notice  of  this  action  to  the 
Embarkation  Service,  which  thereupon  made  the  suitable  entry 
on  the  card.  Presently  the  port  machine  worked  down  through 
the  priority  list  until  it  neared  this  unit.  Thereupon  the  Em- 
barkation Service  issued  a  release  for  the  travel  of  the  unit  to 
the  port  and,  through  the  Adjutant  General  and  the  regular 
military  channel  of  communications,  ordered  the  unit  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  port ;  but — and  this  is  most  important — not  before 
the  troop  commander  had  communicated  with  the  Commander 
of  the  Port  and  from  him  received  specific  orders  for  the  travel. 

Right  here  is  the  secret  of  the  successful  embarkation  of  the 
two  million.  The  Embarkation  Service  did  not  attempt  a  cen- 
tralized control  of  overseas  travel.  If  the  Washington  head- 
quarters had  ordered  the  unit  to  the  port  and  simultaneously 
had  ordered  the  Port  Commander  to  receive  the  unit  and  em- 


240  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

bark  it  upon  a  transport,  the  whole  overseas  travel  system 
would  soon  have  come  to  grief.  Washington  was  too  far  re- 
moved from  that  hour-by-hour  intimacy  with  conditions  at 
waterside  to  attempt  to  manage  the  details  of  embarkation. 
Instead,  it  created  a  joint  responsibility  for  the  travel  of  a 
unit  to  France  and  placed  it  partly  upon  the  unit's  own  com- 
mander and  partly  upon  the  Commander  of  the  Port.  It  was 
not  unduly  difficult  for  those  two  to  arrange  the  travel  without 
interference  to  the  travel  of  other  units. 

A  similar  system  was  applied  to  the  overseas  transportation 
of  individual  officers.  As  soon  as  a  requisition  from  the  A.  E.  F. 
called  for  an  officer  of  certain  qualifications,  a  numbered,  but 
nameless,  card  was  started  in  the  Embarkation  Service's  index. 
Later,  when  an  officer  was  appointed  to  the  assignment,  his 
name  was  entered  on  the  card,  and  in  due  time  the  Service 
made  a  place  for  him  on  a  transport. 

The  activities  of  the  Embarkation  Service  ramified,  we  have 
seen,  in  many  directions.  As  has  been  stated,  it  exercised  com- 
mand over  the  New  York  Fort  of  Embarkation.  Later  it  estab- 
lished expeditionary  depots  at  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  and 
Boston.  These  it  joined  to  the  New  York  Port  of  Embarkation 
as  subsidiary  ports.  It  created  one  other  independent  port — 
that  at  Newport  News.  Troops  and  cargoes  were  embarked 
and  shipped  from  Portland,  Maine,  Montreal,  Quebec,  and 
even  from  Halifax,  Nova  Scotia;  but  these  were  emergency 
ports,  used  only  occasionally;  and  whenever  they  were  in  such 
use  they  were  under  the  command  of  the  New  York  Port 
of  Embarkation.  Newport  News  possessed  no  subsidiary  ports. 
The  Embarkation  Service  also  established  its  famous  courier 
service  for  the  speedy  transmission  of  confidential  or  other 
important  communications  back  and  forth  between  the  A.  E.  F. 
and  Washington;  and  it  conducted  other  enterprises  related 
to  transportation. 

But  fundamentally  the  most  important  activity  of  the  Em- 
barkation Service  was  its  incessant  and  ineluctable  struggle 
for  ocean  tonnage  adequate  to  the  overseas  movement.  The 
overwhelming  disaster  contingent  on  mismanagement  of  the 


THE  EMBARKATION  SERVICE  241 

tonnage  situation  was  a  reality  which  earlier  administrations 
of  the  Service  had  never  fully  grasped.  We  were  forcing  the 
overseas  embarkation  of  troops  to  the  extreme  limit,  a  limit 
which,  before  it  was  reached,  the  military  experts  of  the  world 
had  deemed  impossible  of  attainment.  The  haunting  fear  of 
the  embarkation  authorities  was  that  they  might  dispatch  to 
France  more  troops  than  they  could  find  the  tonnage  to  main- 
tain. If  that  situation  ever  arose,  it  meant  disaster  to  the 
American  arms,  if  not  to  the  Allied  cause. 

The  first  great  triumph  of  the  Embarkation  Service  in  the 
direction  of  procuring  tonnage  was  its  acquisition  of  the  British 
troopships  in  the  spring  of  1918 — an  achievement  most  bril- 
liantly registered  in  the  stupendous  figures  of  overseas  sailings 
in  the  memorable  spring  and  summer  of  that  year.  With  em- 
barkation proceeding  at  such  a  rate,  the  burden  of  finding  the 
necessary  supporting  tonnage  was  more  crushing  than  ever. 
The  Service  and  its  director  were  the  decisive  factor  in  the 
acquisition  of  the  Dutch  tonnage  and,  in  the  late  summer  of 
1918,  of  the  British  cargo  tonnage — both  great  episodes  in 
the  enterprise.  Moreover,  the  exhaustive  studies  of  ocean 
traffic  which  issued  from  the  brain  of  the  Chief  of  Embarka- 
tion were  among  the  notable  documents  produced  in  our  Army 
during  the  World  War.  It  was  upon  them,  in  a  real  and  far- 
reaching  sense,  that  the  War  Department  based  its  whole 
program  of  operation. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS 

AT  Fort  Benjamin  Harrison  in  Indiana  were  three  bat- 
it^  talions  of  the  34th  Regiment  of  Engineers,  operating 
A.  M^  a  military  supply  train  and  a  mobile  repair  shop.  They 
numbered  some  50  officers  and  2,400  enlisted  men,  and  every 
one  of  them  was  impatiently  awaiting  the  order  that  would 
send  them  all  overseas. 

Expectancy  had  been  acute  since  the  14th  of  May,  1918, 
when  the  battalions  had  received  from  the  Commander  of  the 
Port  of  Embarkation  at  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  the  well-known 
and  coveted  form  letter  beginning:  "Instructions  have  been 
received  from  the  War  Department  that  your  organization  has 
been  designated  for  service  abroad.  ..."  The  letter  went  on 
to  tell  them  what  preparations  they  were  to  make  for  sailing. 
Except  for  its  address,  it  was  identical  with  the  letters  sent  to 
all  military  units  about  to  sail  for  France — the  first  harbinger 
of  their  embarkation. 

But  it  was  now  mid-July.  Weeks  ago  the  three  battalions 
had  followed  the  mimeographed  instructions  of  the  letter; 
weeks  ago  they  had  secured  all  of  the  prescribed  paraphernalia 
that  they  could  lay  hands  on.  Two  months  had  passed  and 
brought  no  order  to  proceed  to  the  port.  The  newspapers  were 
black  with  headlines  flaunting  tremendous  doings  in  France. 
The  Germans  were  at  the  height  of  their  successes ;  the  Channel 
ports  were  threatened;  Paris  was  under  bombardment;  and 
American  soldiers  by  hundreds  of  thousands  were  in  the  thick 
of  the  fighting,  writing  their  imperishable  record  on  the  pages 
of  history.  And  out  in  this  peaceful  interior  post,  surrounded 
by  a  smiling  Hoosier  landscape  that  dreamed  beneath  a  sum- 
mer sun,  lay  these  engineer  troops,  eating  their  hearts  out 
with  chagrin  because  of  an  order  that  never  came. 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  243 

Washington  had  not  forgotten  them.  Troops  in  camp  could 
scarcely  be  expected  to  know  about  the  almost  daily  military 
crises  that  upset  the  orderly  arrangements  for  travel  during 
those  momentous  weeks.  Plan  as  they  might  in  advance,  the 
military  heads  in  America  could  not  begin  to  anticipate  the 
needs  of  the  A.  E.  F.  as  those  needs  were  modified  and  con- 
trolled by  events  at  the  front.  And,  although  organizations 
might  be  on  the  list  for  early  sailing,  their  departure  was  often 
postponed  in  order  that  the  Transportation  Service  might 
hurry  to  France,  out  of  turn,  specialized  troops  of  one  sort 
or  another  demanded  forthwith  by  the  A.  E.  F.  cables. 

The  day  came  when  Washington  telegraphed  the  following 
message : 

Adjutant  General's  Office 
July  20,  1918 
To  be  sent  in  broken  code. 
Commanding  General, 

Central  Department, 
Chicago,  Illinois. 

Send  regiment  headquarters,  First,  Second,  and  Fourth  Battalions 
of  34th  Engineers  (Supply  and  Shop),  pertaining  to  Item  E-403  and 
E-404,  3d  Phase,  consisting  of  56  officers  and  2,410  enlisted  men,  now 
at  Fort  Benjamin  Harrison,  Indiana,  to  Port  of  Embarkation,  Hoboken, 
N.  J.,  after  arranging  time  of  arrival  and  other  details  directly  with 
Commander  of  the  Port.  Do  not  entrain  troops  until  Commander  of 
Port  advises  you  that  he  is  ready  to  receive  them.  Have  inspection  made 
to  determine  if  organizations  and  individuals  are  properly  supplied 
with  serviceable  authorized  clothing,  equipment,  and  medical  supplies, 
reporting  result  by  telegram.  Anything  found  lacking  to  be  reported  in 
detail.  Leave  enemy  aliens  behind.  If  any  so  left,  report  number. 

McCain. 

This  was  a  typical  overseas  order;  except  for  the  substitu- 
tion of  other  names  and  addresses,  it  went  to  thousands 
of  expeditionary  organizations.  It  reached  its  destination 
"through  military  channels,"  which  in  this  instance  happened 
to  be  the  Commander  of  the  Central  Department  at  Chicago. 
To  find  whether  the  commanders  of  the  battalion  hastened 
to  comply  with  the  orders  and  to  ask  Hoboken  to  arrange  the 
details  of  their  arrival  at  port,  we  turn  to  the  next  important 


244  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

document  in  the  overseas  file  of  the  34th  Regiment,  a  telegram 
sent  six  days  later  by  Major  General  David  S.  Shanks,  Com- 
mander of  the  Port  of  Embarkation,  Hoboken,  New  Jersey. 

( Translation)  SJC/MS 

CONFIDENTIAL 

July  26,  1918 
Commanding  General,  Central  Department, 

Chicago,  Illinois. 

T-125  Request  you  to  send  to  Camp  Upton,  Long  Island,  New  York, 
to  arrive  not  earlier  than  noon  August  6  and  not  later  than  noon 
August  8:  Regimental  Headquarters,  1st,  2d,  and  4th  Battalions,  34th 
Engineers,  56  officers  and  2,410  enlisted  men,  Item  No.  E-403  and 
E-404,  3d  Phase,  now  at  Fort  Benjamin  Harrison. 

Leave  at  station  all  animals,  ambulances,  combat  wagons,  medical 
carts,  ration  carts,  water  carts,  escort  wagons,  combat  carts,  spring 
wagons,  passenger  automobiles,  motorcycles,  cargo  trucks,  ammunition 
trucks,  and  tank  trucks. 

All  other  vehicles  not  mentioned  above  to  be  shipped  as  freight. 
Ship  freight  to  General  Superintendent,  Army  Transport  Service,  New 
York  City,  for  lighterage  on  separate  bill  of  lading  and  loaded  in 
separate  cars.  Motor  vehicles  must  be  on  second  separate  bill  of  lading 
and  loaded  in  separate  cars.  Advise  accurately  weight  and  cubical 
measurement  of  freight,  and  number  and  make  of  all  vehicles. 

Troops  to  take  with  them  to  Camp  Upton  field  ranges,  field  desks, 
authorized  typewriters,  office  records,  individual  equipment  of  officers 
and  enlisted  men  as  outlined  in  Circular,  War  Department,  July  11, 
1918.  All  officers  should  be  familiar  with  the  various  points  of  ship- 
ment of  freight,  vehicles,  and  baggage  as  above  indicated. 

Personal  records  including  qualifications  and  locator  cards  should 
accompany  troops. 

Consult  with  representative  of  United  States  Railroad  Administration 
regarding  all  details  of  train  movements  and  conform  to  schedule  as 
arranged  with  him.  Telegraph  Commanding  General,  Camp  Upton,  in 
advance  time  of  arrival,  names  of  organizations,  number  of  men  in 
each  section,  and  list  of  shortages.  Please  acknowledge. 

Shanks. 
Copies — 

2  to  Representative  of  U.  S.  R.  R.  Administration. 
1  to  Personnel  Adjutant. 

1  to  General  Superintendent,  Army  Transport  Service. 
1  to  Shipping  Control. 
1  to  Equipment  Officer. 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  245 

1  to  Commanding  Officer  of  Camp. 

1  to  Inspector  of  Camp. 

1  to  Inland  Transportation,  Washington. 

In  the  sequence  of  orders  and  other  communications  which 
passed  during  the  progress  of  an  organization  of  troops  from 
the  training  camp  to  its  quarters  on  shipboard,  one  can  trace 
clearly  the  process  of  embarkation.  Each  departing  unit  left 
in  the  archives  of  the  Port  the  documentary  history  of  its  sail- 
ing. These  paper  records  are  essentially  identical;  to  set  down 
one  of  them  is  to  represent  all.  In  tracing  the  movement  of  the 
34th  Engineers,  however,  we  have  passed  by  one  important 
paper — the  release  for  the  travel,  emanating  from  the  Embar- 
kation Service.  The  Adjutant  General  could  not  act  until  he 
had  this  release  before  him.  Each  day  the  Adjutant  General 
received  from  the  Embarkation  Service  a  number  of  releases 
for  overseas  travel,  and  his  telegrams  ordering  the  troops  to 
the  port  were  the  result.  The  Embarkation  Service  was  in  full 
control  of  the  troop  travel  to  the  ports,  and  only  the  army 
punctilio  which  required  that  troops  receive  operation  orders 
from  the  Command  of  the  Line,  and  not  from  the  General 
Staff,  kept  the  embarkation  authorities  from  communicating 
directly  with  the  troops. 

The  embarkation  release  for  the  34th  Engineers  was  as 
follows : 

CONFIDENTIAL 

July  19,  1918 

MEMORANDUM    FOR    THE    ADJUTANT    GENERAL    OF 
THE  ARMY    541.1 

Subject:  Transfer  of  the  following  troops  to  Port  of  Embarkation, 

Hoboken,  N.  J.:  Regimental  Headquarters,  1st,  2d,  and  4th  Bns., 

34th  Engineers,  Ft.  Benj.  Harrison,  Ind. 

The  Secretary  of  War  directs  that  instructions  be  issued  substantially 
as  follows : 

1.  Direct  Commanding  General,  Central  Department,  confidentially 
by  wire  to  send  the  following  troops  to  the  Port  of  Embarkation, 
Hoboken,  N.  J.,  after  arranging  time  of  arrival  and  other  details 
directly  with  the  Commanding  General  of  the  Port : 

Regimental  headquarters,    1st,  2d,  and  4th  Battalions  of  the  34th 


246  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Engineers  (Supply  and  Shop),  Item  E-403-404,  3d  Phase,  consisting  of 
56  officers  and  2,410  enlisted  men,  now  at  Fort  Benjamin  Harrison, 
Ind. 

2.  Advise  Commanding  General,  Port  of  Embarkation,  Hoboken, 
N.  J.,  of  the  above  action. 

By  authority  of  the  Director  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic. 

Frank  T.  Hines, 

Brigadier-General,  G.  S.,  N.  A., 
RHJ/JIM  Chief  of  Embarkation. 

Copy  to  Hoboken. 

Copy  to  Colonel  McAndrews. 

Copy  to  Inland  Traffic. 

The  reader  will  have  noted  on  the  faces  of  some  of  these 
communications  the  arrangement  for  a  considerable  distribu- 
tion of  copies  of  them.  This  system  was  the  device  which  made 
the  work  of  embarkation  almost  automatic.  One  copy  of  Gen- 
eral Hines's  memorandum  went  to  Hoboken  and  prepared  the 
Port  for  the  impending  travel  of  the  34th  Engineers.  Having 
this  notice,  the  port  officers  would  look  over  their  embarkation 
camp  facilities  and  their  transport  accommodations  for  the 
near  future,  so  as  to  be  able  to  arrange  for  the  reception  and 
embarkation  of  the  engineer  regiment  as  soon  as  they  received 
the  organization's  request  for  travel  directions.  Colonel  Joseph 
R.  McAndrews  was  the  executive  officer  of  the  Operations 
Branch  of  the  General  Staff,  the  primary  executive  arranging 
the  priorities  for  sailing.  His  copy  of  General  Hines's  memo- 
randum showed  him  the  progress  being  made  in  embarkation. 
The  copy  to  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  was  notification  of  the 
impending  railroad  travel  of  the  34th  Engineers.  The  com- 
mander of  the  regiment  would  soon  request  the  Fort  Benjamin 
Harrison  general  agent  of  the  troop-movement  office  to  supply 
trains  and  schedules  for  the  organization.  The  general  agent, 
in  turn,  would  relay  this  request  to  the  troop-movement  office 
in  Washington,  which,  having  received  several  days  earlier  a 
copy  of  General  Hines's  memorandum,  would  have  the  train 
equipment  ready. 

In    the    same    way    General    Shanks,    the    commander   at 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  247 

Hoboken,  directed  a  numerous  distribution  of  copies  of  his 
orders  to  the  34th  Engineers,  notifying  simultaneously  the 
port  representatives  of  the  troop-movement  office,  the  Army 
Transport  Service,  the  Shipping  Control  Committee  (which 
arranged  for  the  reception  of  the  regiment's  freight),  the  com- 
mander of  Camp  Upton,  who  was  to  entertain  the  regiment, 
and  numerous  other  port  officers  to  whom  the  arrival  of  the 
unit  meant  work;  sending  one  copy  as  well  to  the  Inland 
Traffic  Service  in  Washington,  as  a  further  precautionary 
guarantee  that  the  train  equipment  would  be  ready. 

General  Shanks  directed  the  regiment  to  arrive  at  the  port 
between  noon  of  August  6  and  noon  of  August  8,  1918.  Each 
embarkation  camp  sent  daily  to  Hoboken  a  report  of  troops 
in  camp  awaiting  ocean  passage.  In  the  file  at  Hoboken  was  a 
card  which  read  as  follows : 


HEADQUARTERS,  CAMP  UPTON,  L.  I. 

August  9,  1918 

DAILY  REPORT  OF  TROOPS  AT  CAMP  UPTON  AWAITING 

PASSAGE 


Organization  ^  ^  s  -g.  ■^         *^  ^ 

O  tt)  tq  ^  Q  ^  DcJ 


Base  Hospital  No.  62 

30 

200 

No 

No 

7/1        2 

Base  Hospital  Casuals 

69 

88th     Division,    338th 

Mach.  Gn.  Bn. 

23 

730 

No 

Yes 

8/9 

Division  Hdqrs.  Bn.* 

27 

No 

No 

8/8 

Hdqrs.  Troop 

3 

120 

No 

No 

8/8 

Hdqrs.  Detach, 

99 

No 

No 

8/8 

350th  Infantry 

78 

3,382 

No 

No 

8/8 

34th  Engineers  except 

3d  Bn. 

35 

2403 

No 

No 

8/8        3 

*  3  British  officers,  2  French  officers,  5  Army  Field  Clerks  not  included 

R.  V.  HiscoE, 

Major  Infantry,  N.  A.,  Adjutant. 


248  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

The  final  item  shows  that  the  34th  Engineers,  except  the 
3d  battalion  (which  had  not  been  ordered  to  port),  arrived 
at  Camp  Upton  on  August  8,  as  scheduled,  bringing  35  offi- 
cers and  2,403  enlisted  men,  a  strength  somewhat  shorter  than 
had  been  indicated  in  the  preceding  records.  On  August  9  the 
camp  organization  had  not  yet  inspected  the  regiment.  Three 
soldiers  had  gone  absent  without  leave. 

Next  day  the  embarkation  machine  began  to  draw  the  34th 
Engineers  into  its  hopper.  The  port  authorities  sent  to  Camp 
Upton  a  notification  as  follows: 

HEADQUARTERS,  PORT  OF  EMBARKATION 
HOBOKEN,  NEW  JERSEY 


Serial  No. 

August  10,  1918. 

TENTATIV^E  ASSIGNMENT 

Transport  No.  642  {England) 

Pier  No.  61,  North  River,  New  York  City, 

August  15,  1918 

Officers              Men 
34th  Engineers 
Camp  Upton,  Long  Island             35               2,403 

Item  No. 

Phase  3- 

E-403  E-404 

Grand  Total                        35               2,403 
Capacity                             100               2,303 

By  authority  of  the  General  Superintendent,  A.  T.  S. 

C.  E.  Hooper, 

Captain,  Q.  M.  R.  C. 

"Transport  No.  642  (England)"  was  the  British  liner 
Euripides.  Transports,  both  American  and  foreign,  were  called 
by  number  and  not  by  name  during  the  war.  The  assignment  of 
the  34th  to  the  Euripides  was  made  tentatively  because  the 
embarkation  officers  never  knew  until  the  hour  of  sailing  the 
exact  space  to  be  available  on  a  ship;  and  unless  all  three 
battalions  could  get  on  the  Euripides^  not  one  could  be  per- 


.    ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  249 

mitted  to  embark  on  her.  Military  regulations  forbade  the 
splitting  up  of  units  in  overseas  transit.  Note  that  the  capacity 
of  "Transport  642"  lacked  100  berths  of  being  great  enough 
to  accommodate  the  34th  Engineers.  Excess  assigning  of  this 
sort  was  customary.  The  port  officers  knew  by  long  experience 
that  seldom  did  an  embarking  organization  come  up  to  the 
piers  at  its  full  scheduled  strength.  Better  to  risk  crowding 
the  men  a  bit  on  board  ship  than  to  match  accommodations 
in  advance  exactly  to  organization  strength  and  then  see  a 
ship  go  out  with  empty  berths. 

On  the  same  day,  August  10,  the  dispatch  office  at  Hoboken 
sent  to  the  Commander  of  Camp  Upton  the  following 
instructions : 

L-451  August  10,  1918 

From:        Assistant  Port  Adjutant 

To:  Commanding  General,  Camp  Upton,  Long  Island,  N.  Y. 

Subject  :  Overseas  Transportation 

1.  Transportation  available  on  Thursday,  August  15,  1918,  for 
the  following  organizations : 

On  ship  No.  557 : 

51st  Telegraph  Battalion,  9  officers,  206  men,  Item  S-103,  4th  Phase ; 
Field  Hospital  and  Ambulance  Company  No.  39,  1 1  officers,  204  men, 
Item  M-201,  4th  Phase.  These  organizations  should  arrive  at  Pier 
No.  53,  North  River,  New  York  City,  N.  Y.,  on  Thursday,  August 
15,  1918. 

2.  On  ship  No.  556 : 

3d  Battalion  and  Cos.  G  &  H,  350th  Infantry,  38  officers,  1,400  men. 
Attached  medical  personnel,  5  officers,  24  men. 
338th  Machine  Gun  Battalion,  23  officers,  720  men. 
These  organizations  should  arrive  at  Pier  No.  53,  North  River,  New 
York  City,  N.  Y.,  on  Thursday,  August  15,  1918. 

3.  On  ship  No.  642: 

34th  Engineers,  35  officers,  2,403  men.  Items  E-403,  E-404,  3d 
Phase.  This  organization  should  arrive  at  Pier  No.  61,  North  River, 
New  York  City,  N.  Y.,  on  Thursday,  August  15,  1918. 

4.  The  following  advance  parties  will  report  to  Col.  G.  N.  Mc- 
Manus,  C.  A.  C,  at  Pier  No.  1,  Port  of  Embarkation,  Hoboken,  N.  J., 
9  A.M.  Wednesday,  August  14,  1918,  prepared  to  go  aboard  ship  and 


250  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

remain  there.  One  member  of  each  detachment  should  be  a  stenographer, 
who  should  bring  along  a  typewriter. 

5.  For  ship  No.  557. 

Commanding  Officer,  Adjutant,  Senior  Medical  Officer,  and  3  en- 
listed men,  from  51st  Telegraphic  Battalion. 

6.  For  ship  No.  556. 

Commanding  Officer,  Adjutant,  Senior  Medical  Officer,  and  3  en- 
listed men,  from  338th  Machine  Gun  Battalion. 

7.  For  ship  No.  642. 

Commanding  Officer,  Adjutant,  Senior  Medical  Officer,  and  3  en- 
listed men,  from  34th  Engineers. 

8.  Troops  to  take  with  them  light  and  heavy  baggage,  personal 
equipment  of  officers  and  enlisted  men,  and  all  office  records. 

9.  Triplicate  lists  giving  names  of  officers,  noncommissioned  officers 
above  Grade  No.  17,  and  total  number  of  other  enlisted  men,  should 
be  sent  to  these  headquarters  at  the  earliest  possible  moment. 

10.  In  making  routing  consult  with  representatives  of  the  U.  S. 
Railroad  Administration  regarding  details  of  train  movements,  and 
hours  of  departure  and  arrival. 

Please  acknowledge  receipt  by  telegraph  as  soon  as  received. 

F.  F.  Roy, 

Captain,  A.  G.,  N.  A. 
Copies — 

2  to  C.  G.  Camp  Upton 
2  to  U.  S.  R.  R.  Administration  P.  of  E. 
1  to  Personnel  Adj. 
1  to  Transport  Q.  M. 
1  to  Equipment  Officer 
1  to  Director  of  Shipping 
1  to  Assistant  to  C.  G. 
1  to  Dispatch  Off. 

Paragraphs  3  and  7  interest  us.  They  specify  transport, 
pier,  and  date  of  embarkation  for  the  34th  Engineers  and 
arrange  for  the  customary  advance  party  to  go  on  board 
twenty- four  hours  ahead  of  the  others,  to  be  instructed  in  the 
ship  routine  and  be  ready  to  receive  and  settle  in  its  quarters 
the  rest  of  the  regiment  when  it  came  up  the  gangplanks  the 
next  day.  Pier  No.  61  belonged  to  one  of  the  British  lines; 
it  was  located  on  the  New  York  side  of  the  North  River. 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  251 

This  completes  the  historical  file  of  the  sailing  of  the  34th 
Engineers.  After  an  organization  had  sailed,  however,  the 
Port  made  for  its  own  records  an  index  card  giving  tersely  the 
essential  facts  and  dates  in  the  progress  of  the  unit  from 
training  camp  to  transport.  The  following  is  the  text  on  the 
card  showing  this  record  for  the  regimental  headquarters  and 
first  battalion  of  the  34th  Engineers : 

File    508        Organization     Regt.  Hdqrs.  &  34th  Engrs.  Ist  Btn. 
Officers     25        Enl.  above  Grade  17         Other  Enlisted     794 
Station     Ft.  Benjamin  Harrison,  Ind.         Civilian  Employees 
Ordered  to     Camp  Upton        Date     Between  8/6  &  8/8 
Passenger  Lists  &  Embarkation  Regulations  Sent  5/15.  Recd.  7/6 
Release     Par.  8  Sh.  Sch.  No.  /,  3d  Phase;  Hines  7/19 

Authority    A.  G.  7/20  to  C.  G.  Cent.  Dept. 

Ordered    Pier  61  N.  R.  8/15 

Assignment    Euripides  Pier    61 

Date  of  Sailing    Aug.  16,  1918 

Order  Q.  M.  Port  of  Embarkation     Nurses     Civilian  Employees 


Remarks     E-403    E-404  (Item  No.) 


A  perusal  of  this  card  gives  one  more  than  a  little  insight 
into  the  system  of  embarkation.  The  card  is  plain  enough 
to  anyone  as  far  down  as  the  entry  beginning  "Release," 
which  is  followed  by  certain  cryptic  abbreviations  translatable 
into  "Paragraph  8,  Shipping  Schedule  No.  1,  3d  Phase;  Briga- 
dier General  Hines,  July  19,  1918."  This  entry  has  reference 
partly  to  General  Hines's  memorandum  releasing  the  unit  for 
travel  to  the  port,  and  further  to  what  was,  during  the  period 
of  hostilities,  one  of  the  most  secret  of  all  documents  in  the 
possession  of  the  War  Department — Shipping  Schedule  No.  1 . 

Shipping  Schedule  No.  1  was  compiled  by  General  Pershing 
and  his  aides  in  the  early  autumn  of  1917.  It  was  dated  Octo- 


252  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ber  7,  1917.  The  schedule  was  a  product  of  the  study  which 
General  Pershing  and  his  officers  made  in  France  between  the 
time  of  their  arrival  in  early  June  and  the  date  of  the  docu- 
ment. It  was  the  architect's  plan  on  which  the  A.  E.  F.  was  to 
be  erected,  and  at  the  same  time  it  was  a  set  of  instructions 
to  the  military  organization  at  home  as  to  the  order  in  which 
troops  should  be  sent  to  France.  It  provided  for  the  formation 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  up  to  and  including  its  sixth  army  corps.  The 
completion  of  the  schedule  would  put  in  France  thirty  divi- 
sions of  the  line  and  their  necessary  maintenance  and  auxiliary 
troops  in  the  Services  of  Supply  and  the  line  of  communica- 
tions. 

The  schedule  was  divided  into  phases,  each  phase  providing 
for  the  shipment  of  a  single  army  corps  with  its  necessary 
maintenance  organization.  General  Pershing's  headquarters, 
uninformed  of  the  individual  identity  of  the  units  then  being 
recruited  and  trained  in  the  United  States,  made  no  attempt 
in  Shipping  Schedule  No.  1  to  specify  organizations  by  name, 
but  called  for  troops  by  general  designations  according  to  the 
sorts  of  units  desired.  The  Operations  Division  of  the  General 
Staif  on  this  side  took  the  general  requisition  and  made  it  a 
specific  one  by  assigning  to  places  in  the  schedule  the  old  and 
new  organizations  that  fitted  the  requirements.  Thus,  Para- 
graph 8  of  the  3d  Phase  of  that  schedule,  compiled  in  remote 
France  far  back  in  October,  1917,  called  for  three  battalions 
of  Engineers  to  operate  a  supply  train  and  a  repair  shop  in 
the  A.  E.  F.'s  line  of  communications.  By  spring  of  1918  there 
was  such  an  organization  in  existence — the  34th  Engineers — 
three  of  whose  four  battalions  did  operate  a  supply  train  and 
a  shop.  The  Operations  Division  selected  the  34th  to  fill  the 
generic  requisition  of  Paragraph  8  of  the  shipping  schedule; 
and  when  the  Embarkation  Service  had  worked  down  to  this 
point  in  the  schedule,  the  34th  Engineers  received  notice  to 
proceed  to  France. 

The  rest  of  the  card  is  plain,  except  the  final  entry.  In  the 
space  given  to  "Remarks"  we  find  a  mysterious  label — a  so- 
called  "item  number,"  or  rather  two  item  numbers — assigned 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  253 

to  this  unit.  The  numbers  are  E-403  and  E-404,  Phase  3. 
Doubtless  the  reader  has  noticed  that  these  cabalistic  numerals 
have  appeared  on  all  the  communications  reprinted  above. 
They  were  written  in  the  letter  sent  to  the  34th  Engineers  by 
the  Port  of  Embarkation  back  in  May ;  in  fact,  this  letter  bore 
to  the  regiment  its  first  notification  of  the  item  numbers 
assigned  to  it.  The  numerals  appeared  next  in  General  Hines's 
memorandum  to  the  Adjutant  General.  They  were  repeated 
in  the  telegram  of  the  Adjutant  General  ordering  the  travel, 
and  reiterated  in  the  telegram  from  the  Commander  of  the 
Port  detailing  the  travel  arrangements.  They  were  carried  in 
the  assignment  of  the  organization  to  its  transport,  repeated 
once  more  in  the  instructions  from  the  dispatch  office  notify- 
ing the  regiment  when  it  should  arrive  at  the  pier,  set  down 
at  the  head  of  the  passenger  lists,  and,  finally,  written  into 
the  card  record  of  the  unit's  embarkation.  Such  unvarying 
iteration  must  signify  that  these  numbers  were  important;  and 
so  they  were — as  important  as  anything  in  the  whole  trans- 
portation system.  Item  numbers  were  the  means  adopted  by 
the  A.  E.  F.  to  identify  its  component  parts  and  to  prevent 
them  from  getting  lost  in  transit — an  easier  mischance  than  one 
might  suppose. 

To  understand  item  numbers,  we  must  revert  again  to  the » 
A.  E.  F.'s  plan  for  its  own  creation,  its  Shipping  Schedule. 
The  construction  of  such  a  force  is  like  what  that  of  a  modem 
skyscraper  would  be  if  the  skyscraper  were  built  up  floor  by 
floor.  In  the  first  place,  perhaps,  the  architect  planned  only  a 
two-story  building  and  figured  the  strength  of  its  component 
members  according  to  the  stresses  that  so  light  a  weight  would 
put  upon  them.  Then  perhaps  the  owner  found  the  two-story 
structure  too  small  for  his  purposes  and  ordered  the  construc- 
tion of  a  third  story.  This  new  floor  must  be  complete  and 
identical  with  the  floors  below ;  but  the  architect  must  provide 
for  a  strengthening  of  the  foundation  and  the  bracings  to 
accommodate  the  added  weight.  So  the  building  might  rise, 
story  by  story,  and  each  addition  would  require  the  strength- 
ening of  the  substructure. 


254  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

A  truer  analogy,  perhaps,  would  be  an  expanding  manu- 
facturing enterprise.  The  company  starts  with  a  factory  in 
the  suburbs  and  an  executive  office  in  the  financial  district  of 
New  York.  Eventually  it  branches  out  and  establishes  a  new 
factory  in  another  section  of  the  country.  This  factory  is  a 
complete  unit  so  far  as  its  technical  processes  are  concerned, 
but  the  original  executive  office  in  New  York,  by  increasing 
its  staff  somewhat,  can  direct  the  business  of  both  plants  and 
keep  them  supplied  with  orders  and  raw  materials.  And  as 
the  business  grows  the  company  keeps  on  adding  new  factories 
to  its  string,  while,  to  conduct  the  business  for  all  its  plants, 
the  central  managing  organization  expands  in  corresponding 
ratio. 

The  A.  E.  F.  grew  by  army  corps,  each  corps  a  technical 
whole  for  actual  combat  against  the  enemy.  But  as  corps  after 
corps  crossed  the  ocean  and  added  its  weight  to  the  American 
strength  at  the  front,  the  central  management,  consisting  of  a 
general  headquarters  and  the  whole  multiplex  array  of  activi- 
ties embraced  in  the  supply  and  support  system  of  the  expedi- 
tion, had  to  expand  in  like  degree. 

The  problem  of  planning  out  on  paper  a  great  expeditionary 
force  was  complex  beyond  the  power  of  any  single  mind  to 
grasp.  The  construction  of  the  A.  E.  F.  was  in  the  hands  of  its 
own  staff  organization,  the  most  competent  intellects  which 
the  Army  had  at  its  disposal.  Some  sort  of  working  plan  was 
necessary.  Our  capacity  in  the  United  States  to  train  and 
transport  combat  troops  might  be  unlimited;  in  fact,  we  might 
have  entered  the  war  with  millions  of  men  trained  and  ready 
to  go  into  the  trenches  to  meet  the  enemy.  But  it  would  have 
been  utterly  useless  to  train  these  troops  and  send  them  across 
the  ocean,  unless  we  could  accompany  them  with  adequate 
numbers  of  supply  troops.  The  builders  knew  roughly  that  for 
each  corps  there  should  be  135,000  combat  troops,  15,000 
general  troops  for  the  Army  and  corps  commands  and  the  line 
of  communication,  and  50,000  Services-of-Supply  troops.  They 
might  specify  in  advance  the  combat  troops  with  fair  accu- 
racy, but  they  could  scarcely  foresee  all  the  kinds  of  units 


From   An   Official  Motion   Putu 


HUNDREDS  OF  SHIPS  CROWDED  LIKE  THIS,  AND 
EVERY  MAN  IDENTIFIED 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

THE  MADAWASKA  TAKES  A  CROWD,  JUNE  30,  1918 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  255 

needed  in  the  Services  of  Supply;  for  the  maintenance  of  a 
great  expedition  called  for  thousands  of  widely  various  activi- 
ties, scattered  through  almost  the  entire  range  of  human 
enterprise. 

In  order  to  build  the  A.  E.  F.  scientifically,  to  provide  the 
proper  balance  of  troops  sent  to  France  and  to  avoid  the 
fatal  blunder  of  shipping  any  one  class  of  soldiers  in  numbers 
out  of  just  proportion  to  the  whole;  in  order,  further,  to  fore- 
stall confusion  and  give  the  simplicity  of  system  that  comes 
from  dealing  in  small  numbers,  General  Pershing  and  his 
assistants  marked  off  the  construction  of  the  overseas  army 
into  definite  periods  of  increment.  For  want  of  a  better  name, 
each  increment  period  was  called  a  phase.  The  word  "period" 
is  not  an  exact  term  to  apply  to  the  system,  for  it  connotes 
time,  whereas  the  working  plan  for  the  construction  of  the 
A.  E.  F.  was  but  vaguely  related  to  the  time  required.  Gen- 
eral Pershing's  Shipping  Schedule  No.  1  made  provision  for 
six  phases  of  this  construction.  Each  phase,  when  completed, 
would  add  to  the  A.  E.  F.  one  entire  army  corps  plus  its  neces- 
sary maintenance  troops. 

On  October  7,  1917,  this  great  plan  was  set  down  on  paper 
and  forwarded  to  the  United  States.  The  six  phases  provided 
for  an  overseas  American  Army  of  thirty  divisions  (five  divi- 
sions to  the  corps).  Counting  in  supply  troops,  the  force  thus 
projected  would  number  1,200,000  men.  No  time  was  fixed 
within  which  America  was  to  complete  the  schedule.  General 
Pershing  hoped  we  could  accomplish  the  feat  by  July  l, 
1919 — in  twenty  months.  We  can  measure  the  increase  in 
our  ability  to  train  and  transport  troops  by  the  fact  that  in 
August,  1918,  less  than  eleven  months  after  the  date  of  the 
Shipping  Schedule,  the  Embarkation  Service  was  forwarding 
to  France  the  final  units  of  the  sixth  phase. 

After  that  the  Army  abandoned  the  numerical  phase  and 
substituted  the  monthly  phase:  we  had  become  able  to  trans- 
port to  France  in  a  single  month  an  entire  army  corps  with 
its  supports!  The  sixth  was  the  last  of  the  numbered  phases. 
September,   1918,  was  an  interval  during  which  we  shipped 


256  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

miscellaneous  phase  troops  pushed  out  of  their  sailing  priorities 
by  emergency  calls  from  the  front ;  and  then  we  began  on  the 
new  system,  naming  each  phase  after  the  month  during  which 
it  was  being  shipped.  When  the  armistice  came  in  November, 
we  were  still  shipping  troops  of  the  October  phase,  the  influ- 
enza epidemic  and  the  assurance  on  November  1,  1918,  that 
the  war  was  about  to  end  having  slowed  down  the  movement 
during  the  last  eleven  days. 

One  is  not  to  suppose  that  the  Army  made  a  clean  job  of 
shipping  phases  of  the  A.  E.  F.  to  France.  Frequently,  before 
one  phase  had  been  completed  there  was  a  need  overseas  for 
troops  of  the  succeeding  phase ;  and  it  was  not  unusual  for  units 
of  even  three  phases  to  be  crossing  the  ocean  simultaneously. 
Phases  always  overlapped  somewhat.  The  Shipping  Schedule, 
after  all,  was  but  a  working  outline,  to  be  followed  only  so 
far  as  events  warranted. 

In  the  compilation  of  Shipping  Schedule  No.  1,  General 
Pershing  adopted  the  item  number  as  the  means  of  identifying 
troops  arriving  in  France  in  response  to  the  requisition.  In 
the  paper  army  thus  laid  down — some  of  it  months  before  its 
human  members  had  even  been  inducted  into  the  military  ser- 
vice of  the  United  States — the  prescribed  units  were  assigned 
item  numbers  and  initials. 

The  initial  I  stood  for  Infantry,  E  for  Engineers,  M  for 
Medical  Corps  troops,  Q  for  Quartermaster  troops,  and  so  on. 
The  numbers,  too,  had  meanings.  Divisional  troops  bore  item 
numbers  ranging  from  1  to  100  serially  within  each  phase; 
troops  attached  to  army  corps  bore  numbers  from  101  to  200; 
troops  acting  in  the  service  of  the  commands  of  field  armies, 
from  201  to  300;  units  for  service  in  that  great  expeditionary 
institution  known  as  G.  H.  Q.,  301  to  400;  and  troops  for  the 
lines  of  communication,  401  to  500. 

We  can  now  read  meaning  into  the  item  numbers  assigned 
to  the  34th  Regiment  of  Engineers.  Back  in  the  early  autumn 
of  1917,  the  A.  E.  F.  builders  had  reached  the  plan  for  the 
third  phase  of  increment.  There  they  foresaw  that  the  A.  E.  F. 
would  need,  at  a  certain  point  in  its  structure,  a  supply  train 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  257 

and  machine  shop.  In  Paragraph  No.  8  under  Phase  3  they  set 
down  these  requirements  and  gave  them  the  item  numbers 
E-403  and  E-404.  The  initial  E  showed  that  the  troops  would 
be  Engineers.  Since  the  numerals  were  in  the  400' s,  they  indi- 
cated to  anyone  familiar  with  the  system  that  the  units  were 
to  serve  within  the  lines  of  communication. 

Months  later  the  Operations  Division  of  the  General  Staff, 
engaged  in  turning  the  abstract  schedule  into  a  specific  force, 
came  to  Phase  3,  Paragraph  8.  The  General  Staff  officers  in 
Washington  surveyed  the  troop  resources  which  had  now 
sprung  into  existence  at  the  training  camps ;  and  at  Fort  Ben- 
jamin Harrison  they  found  the  34th  Engineers,  three  of  whose 
battalions  operated  a  supply  train  and  a  machine  shop.  These 
battalions  fitted  the  requisition.  Therefore,  opposite  the  two 
item  numbers  of  Paragraph  8  the  Operations  Division  set  down 
the  name  of  the  34th  Engineers.  This  act  gave  the  regiment  its 
place  in  the  priorities  for  sailing.  Thereafter  the  item  numbers 
became  an  integral  part  of  the  regiment's  name,  to  appear  in 
every  order  concerning  its  travel.  At  length  the  34th  reached 
France.  No  need  there  for  the  A.  E.  F.  debarkation  officers  to 
inquire  into  the  regiment's  qualifications  and  then  find  a  place 
where  it  might  serve:  that  place  had  been  fixed  months  be- 
fore. The  debarkation  officials  needed  only  to  turn  to  Ship- 
ping Schedule  No.  1  to  learn  precisely  why  the  A.  E.  F.  needed 
the  unit  and  where  it  was  to  be  sent. 

This  system  of  identification  was  followed  rigidly  in  the 
upbuilding  of  the  first  six  army  corps  of  the  expedition,  in 
so  far  as  the  needs  of  the  force  could  be  foreseen  a  year  in 
advance.  All  combat  organizations,  at  any  rate,  and  many 
supply  units  which  moved  to  France  during  the  major  part 
of  the  embarkation  period,  possessed  item  numbers  assigned 
by  the  command  of  the  overseas  force  in  its  first  schedule. 
But  at  that  early  date  General  Pershing's  experts  could 
scarcely  anticipate  the  enormous  expansion  of  the  need  for 
units  of  kinds  previously  unknown  in  our  military  service. 
Finite  minds  could  not  be  expected  to  lay  down  in  advance 
every  detail  of  a  modem  army  as  large  as  the  A.  E.  F. 


258  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Who  could  know  in  the  summer  of  1917  that,  less  than  a 
year  later,  our  expedition  would  be  calling  for  whole  com- 
panies of  meteorological  experts  to  form  a  weather  bureau 
for  the  A.  E.  F.?  In  many  ways  the  accurate  prediction  of 
weather  conditions  was  of  invaluable  aid  to  the  Army.  It 
enabled  the  Air  Service  to  lay  its  plans  with  intelligence. 
Weather  forecasts  controlled  to  a  great  extent  the  employment 
of  poisonous  gases,  for  certain  of  these  could  be  used  with 
most  success  only  when  the  wind  blew  toward  the  enemy.  The 
draft  reached  out  and  took  men  from  every  calling.  The  train- 
ing and  experience  of  every  one  of  the  4,000,000  men  in  the 
American  Army  was  ascertained  and  catalogued  in  the  great 
index  of  human  talents  compiled  in  the  War  Department  in 
Washington.  For  the  Operations  Division  to  supply  a  whole 
company  of  weather  prognosticators  on  short  notice  became  a 
mere  trifle.  As  the  A.  E.  F.  expanded,  there  were  dozens  of 
other  calls  for  special  units  strange  to  our  former  military 
practice.  Requisitions  came  for  companies  of  typesetters  and 
linotype  operators,  embalmers  and  grave  registrars,  motion- 
picture  camera  operators,  cold  storage  experts,  pharmacists, 
and  coffee  roasters  and  tasters — to  name  only  a  few  of  the 
innovations. 

Nor  could  it  be  foreseen  in  the  summer  of  1917  that  the 
Army  would  add  whole  services  to  the  group  it  had  known 
before — such  organizations  as  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service 
and  the  Tank  Corps.  In  short,  the  phase  program  as  laid  down 
by  General  Pershing  in  October,  1917,  did  not  begin  to  meet 
the  developing  actualities.  Then,  too,  the  putative  army  as  it 
existed  on  paper  in  the  Shipping  Schedule  was  by  no  means 
complete,  even  in  well-recognized  troops.  Often  it  became  nec- 
essary for  the  A.  E.  F.  to  go  outside  its  schedule  in  the  call 
for  such  soldiers  as  quartermaster  troops  and  motor  trans- 
port troops.  Many  organizations  proceeded  to  the  seaboard 
and  thence  to  France  duly  identified  with  item  numbers  from 
the  original  schedules;  but  thousands  of  others  crossed  in 
response  to  supplementary  requisitions,  and  these  units  bore 
no  item  numbers. 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS  259 

The  Operations  Division  tried  to  give  each  unnumbered 
unit  identification  by  writing  into  all  orders  which  concerned 
it,  in  juxtaposition  to  its  unit  name,  the  serial  number  of  the 
Pershing  cablegram  which  requested  it  and  the  cablegram 
paragraph  number.  But  this  plan  did  not  work.  The  debarka- 
tion officers  at  French  and  English  ports  might  or  might  not 
have  before  them  copies  of  General  Pershing's  cablegrams. 
Seldom  did  the  commander  of  an  overseas  unit  know  for  what 
purpose  he  and  his  men  had  been  summoned  to  France.  For 
a  time  there  was  great  confusion  in  France  because  of  incom- 
plete identification  of  arrivals;  hundreds  of  individuals  and 
organizations  became  lost,  and  some  never  did  reach  the  posts 
for  which  they  had  been  requisitioned. 

A  new  supply  warehouse  might  be  set  up  somewhere  along 
the  lines  of  communication  in  France.  The  Q.  M.  organiza- 
tion discovered  that  the  phase  plan  had  not  contemplated  this 
establishment  and  had  made  no  provision  for  troops  to  man 
it.  The  commander  of  the  depot  thereupon  made  requisition 
to  the  headquarters  of  the  A.  E.  F.  for,  let  us  say,  200  quar- 
termaster troops.  This  requisition  in  due  time  found  a  place 
in  one  of  General  Pershing's  cablegrams.  Perhaps  at  the  time 
the  Operations  Division  could  find  no  quartermaster  company 
numbering  200  men,  but  discovered  one  of  125  men.  Natu- 
rally it  dispatched  the  125  men  to  France  and  made  up  the 
deficit  in  later  shipments.  Suppose  the  first  organization,  the 
one  with  125  men,  were  lucky  enough  to  meet  at  the  French 
debarkation  port  a  copy  of  its  requisitioning  cablegram.  The 
debarkation  officer  sent  the  unit  at  once  to  its  correct  destina- 
tion. But  the  succeeding  detachments  were  almost  certain  not 
to  be  identified  upon  arrival  overseas,  and  the  port  officer 
there  would  send  them  to  any  spot  which  needed  such  troops. 
Presently  the  depot  commander  would  complain  bitterly  that 
his  requisition  was  not  honored.  Operations,  in  Washington, 
could  only  reply  that  they  had  sent  him  his  men  long  ago. 

The  plight  of  individuals  whose  services  were  not  contem- 
plated in  the  Shipping  Schedule  of  October,  1917,  might  be 
even  more  unfortunate.  A  casual  officer  specially  requested 


26o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

by  the  A.  E.  F.  did  not  often  know  for  what  purpose  he  was 
being  summoned,  or  where  he  was  to  go  in  France.  No  more 
would  the  debarkation  port  know  about  him;  and  he  was 
usually  sent  wherever  the  A.  E.  F.  port  official  fancied  he 
could  be  of  service.  At  one  time  a  highly  trained  technical 
man,  commissioned  in  the  Army,  was  requested  for  special 
service  in  France.  The  A.  E.  F.  officer  who  sent  for  him  had 
in  mind  an  important  post  which  he  was  eminently  qualified 
to  fill.  This  casual  lost  his  identity  in  transit.  The  service  that 
requisitioned  him  searched  France  for  him  in  vain  for  months — 
and  found  him  after  the  armistice  bossing  a  gang  of  stevedores 
at  one  of  the  army  docks  I 

On  April  24,  1918,  the  Army  took  measures  to  end  this 
confusion.  After  that  date  the  A.  E.  F.  assigned  item  numbers 
to  all  excess  organizations  and  officers  summoned  to  France, 
and  these  numbers  were  outside  of  and  different  from  the 
phase  numbers  of  the  original  schedule.  The  lid  was  screwed 
down  on  embarkations  except  upon  cabled  requisitions  giving 
item  numbers.  The  A.  E.  F.  adopted  new  arbitrary  number 
groups  for  these  excess  troops.  This  system  continued  through- 
out the  heaviest  period  of  embarkation.  It  saved  the  A.  E.  F. 
a  confusion  that  would  have  become  tremendous  after  the 
late  spring  of  1918,  when  troops  began  avalanching  on  France. 

By  April,  1918,  the  number  of  recognized  classes  of  troops 
had  greatly  expanded.  The  A.  E.  F.  then  adopted  a  system 
of  initials  to  go  with  item  numbers  and  help  identify  organi- 
zations. The  list  of  abbreviations,  as  it  stood  at  the  time  of 
the  armistice,  was  as  follows: 

X Reinforcements 

K New  Units 

W Exceptional  Replacements 

R Automatic  Replacements 

I Infantry 

CA Coast  Artillery 

FA Field  Artillery 

C Cavalry 

E Engineers 

A Aviation 


ORDERS  AND  ITEM  NUMBERS 


261 


T Tank  Service 

M Medical  Corps 

S Signal  Corps 

O Ordnance  Corps 

MAR Marine  Corps 

Q Quartermaster 

TRANS      ....  Transportation  Corps 

G Chemical  Warfare  Service 

L Light  Railroad  and  Roads 

F Construction  and  Forestry 

MOTOR     ....  Motor  Transport  Corps 

AG Adjutant  General's  Dept. 

IG Inspector  General 

JA Judge  Advocate 

SERVICE  ....  Army  Service  Corps 

An  interesting  development  of  item  numbers  occurred  in 
the  system  of  identification  for  replacement  troops.  Under  the 
army  maintenance  plan  adopted  in  the  summer  of  1918,  re- 
placements became  automatic  monthly.  The  authorities  on  this 
side  of  the  water,  in  other  words,  did  not  have  to  wait  for 
cabled  requisitions  for  replacement  troops,  but  shipped  them  at 
a  predetermined  monthly  rate.  Yet  it  was  essential  to  prevent 
the  identity  of  replacements  from  being  lost  and  the  men  them- 
selves from  being  diverted  by  the  French  debarkation  ports  to 
any  other  purpose  than  that  for  which  they  were  shipped.  Con- 
sequently the  replacements  were  given  item  numbers,  which  the 
Operations  Division  assigned  as  soon  as  replacements  reached 
camp  and  were  organized  into  units.  Other  troop  units  did  not 
receive  item  numbers  until  there  was  a  special  call  for  them 
from  France,  or  until  the  Operations  Division  reached  the 
places  in  the  Shipping  Schedule  where  they  fitted.  A  replace- 
ment unit  received  its  item  number  immediately  after  organi- 
zation, and  this  item  number  ended  in  the  initial  R,  which,  as 
the  above  table  shows,  indicated  that  they  were  automatic 
replacements.  A  unit  of  soldiers  arriving  in  France  under  the 
item  number  I-1119-R  would  at  once  be  identified  there  as  a 
company  of  automatic  replacement  infantry.  The  A.  E.  F. 
possessed  the  list  of  replacement  numbers  representing  troops 
that  were  to  reach  France  each  month,  and  sent  to  the  ports  of 


262  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

debarkation  instructions  as  to  the  destination  of  each  body  of 
replacements. 

Just  as,  after  April,  1918,  all  excess  organizations  received 
item  numbers,  so  did  all  casual  officers  proceeding  overseas 
for  special  work  in  the  A.  E.  F.  The  casual  officers'  item  num- 
bers began  with  the  numeral  1001  and  proceeded  upwards 
serially. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION 

NEAR  the  end  of  each  month  there  was  a  meeting  in 
Washington  to  determine  the  number  and  identity 
of  troops  to  go  overseas  during  the  ensuing  month, 
and  to  fix  the  order  of  their  sailing. 

The  Operations  Division  of  the  General  Staff  called  and 
conducted  the  meeting.  The  Chief  of  Embarkation  brought  an 
estimate  of  his  port  facilities  for  the  accommodation  and 
handling  of  troops  during  the  period  under  consideration. 
The  embarkation  director  stationed  in  America  by  the  British 
Ministry  of  Shipping  came  with  schedules  of  the  names  and 
passenger  capacities  of  the  English  transports  which  were  to 
sail  from  New  York  and  Canadian  ports.  Our  own  navy  rep- 
resentative was  more  cautious,  but  he  undertook  to  predict 
what  American  transports  would  depart  during  the  first  ten 
days  of  the  month,  promising  supplementary  and  additional 
schedules  each  succeeding  ten  days.  The  Operations  Division 
had  before  it  the  A.  E.  F.  Shipping  Schedule,  the  names  of 
organizations  assigned  to  the  schedule,  and  data  covering  the 
readiness  of  these  organizations  for  foreign  service.  The  rep- 
resentative of  the  troop-movement  office  was  present  to  see  to 
it  that  the  arrangement  of  the  monthly  sailing  priorities  was 
coordinated  with  the  efficient  employment  of  the  available 
railway  equipment. 

Anyone  who  can  add  two  and  two  together  can  see  that, 
with  all  this  information  and  ability  encompassed  by  the  walls 
of  a  single  room,  it  was  entirely  possible  to  project  on  paper 
a  complete  diagram  of  troop  embarkation  for  a  month  in 
advance.  We  knew  to  a  man  how  many  passengers  the  ships 
could  carry  and  to  a  man  where  the  passengers  were  coming 
from.  Therefore,  to  any  lover  of  the  orderly,  the  systematic. 


264  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  thirty-day  sailing  priority  schedule  that  eventuated  from 
this  meeting  was  a  thing  beautiful  to  see ;  it  was  System  with  a 
capital  S. 

Unfortunately  for  all  planning,  human  ability  is  fallible 
and  inanimate  objects  are  perverse.  Transports  had  a  way  of 
sinking  with  gaping  wounds  in  their  sides  where  German  tor- 
pedoes had  struck  in.  Storms  and  head  winds  upset  the  best 
prognostications  of  the  mariners.  Ship  machinery  broke  down 
and  had  to  be  repaired.  Labor  troubles  delayed  vessels  in  the 
foreign  ports.  Bunker  coal  was  not  always  available  on  the 
minute.  Never  once  did  the  actual  sailings  of  British  trans- 
ports befall  as  the  predictions  had  said;  never  once  did  the 
American  troop  carriers  depart  seaward  in  exact  accordance 
with  a  ten-day  forecast.  Events  showed  that  the  basis  for  the 
monthly  sailing  schedule  was  more  or  less  accurate  guesswork. 

It  was  evident  that  the  embarkation  machine  must  have  a 
governor  like  an  engine's;  a  contrivance  for  opening  the  valve 
wider  to  admit  more  troops  when  the  sailings  exceeded  the 
estimates,  and  for  closing  the  throttle  when  the  influx  of 
soldiers  threatened  to  flood  the  port.  The  embarkation  camps, 
a  reservoir  that  could  accommodate,  in  a  pinch,  60,000  troops, 
aided  in  this  adjustment;  but  they  alone  were  not  sufficient  to 
make  the  sailing  schedule  work.  The  adjusting  mechanism,  the 
governor  on  the  machine,  was  the  dispatch  office  at  Hoboken. 
It  fitted  the  prospectus  to  the  actual  day-to-day  conditions. 
A  small  handful  of  officers  did  the  work  of  the  dispatch  office, 
and  they  were  busy  men — how  busy  an  illustration  will  show. 

The  day  was  a  Thursday.  The  business  in  hand  at  the  port 
was  the  embarkation  of  32,000  troops  who  were  to  sail  on 
Saturday  on  a  British  convoy  of  fourteen  vessels.  The  32,000 
were  all  in  the  embarkation  camps  (along  with  other  troops 
awaiting  sailings,  the  total  filling  the  camp  to  capacity),  under- 
going the  final  preparations  for  the  voyage.  The  dispatch  office 
regarded  the  job  as  done;  it  was  now  working  in  terms  of  the 
future,  and  had  already  ordered  to  New  York  32,000  troops 
to  occupy  the  barracks  to  be  vacated  on  Saturday  by  those  who 
were  embarking  on  the  British  ships.  At  this  juncture  the  Brit- 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

AT  ALPINE,  WAITING  FOR  FERRYBOATS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


BOARDING  FERRY  FOR  PIERS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

LANDING  FROM   FERRY   AT   HOBOKEN 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

ENTERING  PIER  FROM  RIVER  END 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  265 

ish  embarkation  officer  telephoned  that  the  British  Ministry 
had  cut  four  ships  out  of  the  convoy,  reducing  its  capacity  to 
25,000  troops. 

Such  belated  changes  were  not  unusual.  Frequently  the  home 
conditions  in  England  demanded  the  temporary  withdrawal 
of  ships  which  had  been  assigned  to  the  American  Embarka- 
tion Service.  Once  in  the  spring  of  1918,  after  the  British  Food 
Controller  had  inventoried  the  reserves  and  found  only  six 
days'  supply  of  food  in  all  England,  the  Ministry  drastically 
cut  down  the  passenger  space  on  the  transatlantic  ships  and 
crammed  staterooms  and  berth  decks,  as  well  as  cargo  holds, 
with  food  for  the  English  people.  It  was  some  such  emergency 
which  had  arisen  now.  The  dispatch  officers  took  the  upset  with 
philosophical  sang  froid.  They  were  used  to  it.  They  could 
make  the  adjustment  by  sending  out  telegrams  to  catch  7,000 
troops  at  interior  camps  before  they  had  entrained  for  the  rail 
journey  to  New  York,  where  now  there  would  be  just  so  many 
barrack  accommodations  fewer  than  had  been  expected. 

On  Friday  the  British  withdrew  another  ship,  this  time  a 
big  one.  On  Saturday  they  cut  out  another,  and  the  mutilated 
convoy  to  sail  that  day  contained  only  eight  ships  instead  of 
fourteen,  with  berths  for  16,000  soldiers  instead  of  32,000. 
It  was  a  jolly  situation.  Actually  on  the  piers  was  an  excess  of 
men,  brought  there  during  the  night,  before  the  final  ship  was 
canceled;  and  traveling  steadily  toward  New  York  were  troop 
trains  on  which  rode  nearly  16,000  men  more  than  could  find 
places  to  eat  and  sleep  in  the  embarkation  camps. 

Such  contretetnps  as  this  kept  the  dispatch  officers  from 
participating  in  that  popular  Hoboken  pastime,  wondering 
when  an  ingrate  Government  was  going  to  send  one  to  France 
to  see  some  of  the  excitement.  After  a  man  had  finished  a 
twelve-  or  fourteen-hour  stint  during  which  nothing  ever 
moved  smoothly  or  as  expected,  he  was  too  tired  to  wonder 
about  anything  except  how  long  it  would  take  him  to  get  to 
bed.  The  dispatch  office  was  the  contact  point  between  theory 
and  conditions,  and  the  job  of  absorbing  the  friction  was  no 
picnic. 


266  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Yet  the  managerial  acrobats  of  the  office  were  never  found 
wanting.  They  solved  every  problem,  and  they  met  the  situa- 
tion set  forth  in  the  preceding  paragraphs.  In  that  instance 
they  gave  orders  to  the  port  railway  agent  to  slow  down  the 
incoming  troop  trains  to  the  speed  of  freight  trains,  so  as  to 
utilize  the  coaches  as  mobile  barracks;  and  they  postponed 
further  travel  toward  the  port  until  the  almost  daily  sailings 
had  cleared  away  the  congestion. 

The  dispatch  office,  when  it  began  its  career,  was  part  of 
the  Port  Commander's  own  office.  In  those  days  a  troop  con- 
voy sailed  about  every  two  weeks.  The  dispatch  officers  then 
both  ordered  troops  to  come  to  New  York  and  conducted  them 
through  the  port.  As  the  volume  of  travel  grew,  these  duties 
became  too  heavy  for  a  single  agency  to  handle  and  were 
divided  among  other  port  organizations.  The  whole  port  sys- 
tem expanded  and  ramified  in  hundreds  of  directions ;  it  came 
to  embrace  twenty-one  distinct  departments,  each  administered 
by  a  branch  of  the  port  organization.  The  dispatch  office  was 
then  not  even  a  branch:  it  was  the  twig  of  a  branch.  But, 
though  humble  in  position,  it  was  mighty  in  importance. 

The  dispatch  office  was  the  Port  Commander's  right  hand 
in  his  contact  with  all  traveling  organizations.  When  a  unit 
was  first  placed  on  the  sailing  priority  list,  the  dispatch  office 
notified  it  of  the  fact  and  sent  to  it  the  booklet  E?nbarkation 
Regulations  and  other  general  instructions  relating  to  its  travel. 
When,  later,  the  unit  commander  telegraphed  to  Hoboken  for 
travel  instructions,  the  dispatch  office,  in  the  name  of  the  Com- 
manding General,  replied,  designating  the  embarkation  camp, 
the  time  of  arrival,  the  equipment  to  be  brought  and  that  to 
be  left  behind,  and  other  steps  to  be  taken.  When  the  unit 
was  in  the  embarkation  camp,  inspected,  equipped,  and  ready 
for  embarkation,  the  dispatch  office  ordered  its  advance  party 
to  the  transport  and  named  the  day  for  the  unit  itself  to  move 
to  the  designated  pier. 

In  general,  Washington  expected  the  Port  to  follow  the 
fixed  sailing  priorities ;  but  the  War  Department  was  not  hide- 
bound by  its  schedules.  The  administration,  at  least  informally, 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  267 

permitted  a  certain  latitude  to  the  dispatch  office;  it  was  con- 
tent to  accept  judgment  of  the  men  who  were  on  the  spot  and 
confronting  the  actual  conditions.  If  the  Port  were  reaching 
out  desperately  for  troops — as  it  was  at  the  end  of  the  war, 
when  the  transport  facilities  were  exceeding  the  ability  of  the 
country  to  raise  and  prepare  troops  for  foreign  service — the 
dispatch  office  skipped  about  in  the  priority  list  and  took  any 
troops  who  were  ready  for  departure,  rather  than  hold  up  the 
whole  column  because  one  organization  or  another  had  en- 
countered delay  in  getting  away  from  its  training  camp.  It  is 
to  the  credit  of  the  organization  in  Washington  that  it  invari- 
ably backed  up  and  authenticated  such  deviations  from  the 
orders. 

The  flexibility  of  the  Embarkation  Service  was  never  better 
demonstrated  than  in  the  spring  of  1918,  when  the  British 
first  placed  their  transport  tonnage  at  our  disposal.  Up  to  that 
time  we  had  been  sending  over  divisions  as  nearly  complete 
as  possible — infantry,  machine  gunners,  artillery,  and  divi- 
sional support  troops — always  keeping  two,  three,  or  even  four 
divisions  proceeding  overseas  simultaneously.  Also  as  nearly 
as  possible,  we  were  completing  the  phase  shipments  in  regular 
order,  so  as  to  place  in  France  an  entire  army  corps,  with  its 
necessary  communication  troops,  before  proceeding  to  ship  any 
of  the  next  corps.  Exigencies  at  the  front  upset  this  plan  for 
a  time.  The  Germans  were  driving  ahead  and  consuming  the 
Allied  trench  troops  at  a  ruinous  rate.  The  British  offer  to 
transport,  feed,  and  brigade  with  the  B.  E.  F.  six  divisions  of 
American  line  troops,  and  when  these  had  been  supplied  to  take 
another  six,  was  an  offer  to  carry  infantry  and  machine  gunners 
only.  The  British  had  plenty  of  artillery  to  support  a  retreating 
action.  Later  on  these  brigaded  divisions  were  to  join  the 
A.  E.  F.,  and  only  then  were  they  to  receive  their  artillery. 

The  change  in  embarkation  plans  came  suddenly  in  March, 
1918.  Washington  telephoned  that  until  further  notice  the 
Port  was  to  ship  only  infantry  and  machine  gun  troops  to 
France,  whether  in  British  or  American  convoys,  and  that  only 
if  the  suppl)^  of  available  infantry  organizations  and  machine 


268  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

gun  companies  ran  out  was  the  Port  to  send  artillery  and  Ser- 
vices-of-Supply  troops.  At  that  time  Hoboken  was  engaged  in 
the  routine  embarkation  of  the  Third  Division.  This  shipment 
it  abruptly  broke  off;  and  for  weeks  thereafter  ship  upon  ship 
departed  from  New  York  loaded  to  the  rails  with  doughboys 
only.  Later  on,  when  the  weight  of  these  troops  began  to  be 
felt  by  the  enemy  and  the  emergency  was  over,  the  Port  re- 
sumed its  work  on  the  Third  Division. 

The  dispatch  office  almost  always  succeeded  in  keeping  the 
embarkation  camps  crammed  to  the  limit;  and  for  whole 
months  during  1918  there  was  not  a  day  when  a  man  with 
telescopic  bird's-eye  vision,  looking  down  on  the  railroad  sys- 
tem of  the  United  States,  could  not  have  seen,  in  motion 
toward  the  seaboard,  trains  carrying  from  15,000  to  20,000 
more  troops  than  the  port  camps  could  hold  if  anything  hap- 
pened to  curtail  embarkation.  In  the  face  of  this  nice  adjust- 
ment of  troop-flow  to  sailing  space,  last-minute  changes  in 
transport  or  convoy  capacity  were  chronic.  Sometimes,  to  avoid 
holding  a  ship  in  port  for  repairs,  it  was  decided  to  make  re- 
pairs during  the  voyage.  Then  bunks  had  to  be  torn  out  to 
make  space  in  which  to  stow  the  repair  parts,  and  the  passen- 
ger room  was  reduced  by  so  much.  The  British  seldom  adjusted 
passenger  and  cargo  space  on  a  ship  long  before  the  eve  of 
sailing. 

A  last-minute  change  in  passenger  capacity  might  be  slight, 
but  for  the  dispatch  office  it  often  created  a  problem  quite  out 
of  proportion  to  the  change.  Military  law  required  every  or- 
ganization to  cross  the  ocean  undivided.  A  change  that  threw 
one  company  of  a  regiment  off  a  transport,  automatically 
threw  off  the  whole  regiment,  and  the  dispatch  office  had  to 
hunt  up,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  a  new  unit  to  fit  the  reduced 
space.  Casuals  and  supply  troops  came  in  handy  at  such  times : 
they  usually  traveled  in  small  units,  and  consequently  packed 
well. 

In  spite  of  all  the  difficulties  in  providing  troops,  only  one 
transport  sailed  from  America  with  any  empty  berths,  and 
even  that  one  was  three-quarters  filled.  It  is  true  that,  during 


^^^^b  i^^^lB 

1 

i 

jUI 

1 

i 

^ 

Im&i 

^ 

^^1 

W  f^^^^^BL 

'I^^^Hh 

9w 

From   An    Official  Motion   Puturo 

COFFEE  AND  ROLLS  AT  RED  CROSS  PIER  CANTEEN 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


FIRST  FOOD  SINCE  3.00  A.M. 


From  An   Official  Motion  Picture 

"SAFE-ARRIVAL"  CARDS  SLIPPED  INTO  CAPS  BY 
WELFARE  WORKERS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


A  "SAFE-ARRIVAL"  CARD 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  269 

the  influenza  epidemic,  ships  sailed  with  fewer  passengers  than 
they  could  carry,  but  this  reduction  in  capacity  was  insisted  on 
by  the  medical  authorities.  The  dispatch  office  regarded  a  ship 
as  loaded  full  when  its  troops  totaled  the  capacity  allowed 
by  the  army  doctors. 

The  Port  not  only  loaded  ships  to  capacity:  it  overloaded 
some  of  them.  Several  of  the  former  German  vessels,  originally 
built  to  transport  troops  of  the  German  army,  carried  loads 
far  beyond  the  utmost  capacity  which  their  builders  had  reck- 
oned on.  We  installed  berths  far  more  thickly  than  any  foreign 
plans  had  contemplated;  and,  furthermore,  we  placed  soldiers 
aboard  in  such  numbers  that  there  were  not  enough  berths  for 
all,  and  the  men  had  to  sleep  in  shifts.  Never  in  history  had 
such  an  expedient  been  resorted  to. 

The  dispatch  office  controlled  overseas  troop  movements  to 
New  York's  subsidiary  ports,  from  each  of  which,  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore,  two  or  three  ships  sailed  in  an 
average  month.  Occasionally,  too,  there  were  shipments  from 
Portland,  Maine,  and  from  Montreal  and  Quebec.  At  these 
ports  there  were  no  embarkation  camps;  the  troops  were 
equipped  and  inspected  for  overseas  service  at  their  home 
camps  before  proceeding  to  shipside. 

All  troops  came  to  the  New  York  piers  by  ferry.  The  water 
trip  from  Camp  Merritt  to  the  North  River  has  been  described. 
Troops  at  Camp  Mills  or  Camp  Upton,  on  Long  Island,  trav- 
eled by  train  to  the  waterside  terminal  in  Long  Island  City 
and  there  embarked  on  ferry-boats.  As  the  men  scrambled  to 
the  floor  of  the  pier  they  lined  up  to  respond  to  the  company 
roll-call.  This  formality  ended,  they  were  allowed  to  approach 
the  tables  set  by  canteen  workers  of  the  Red  Cross.  Here,  in 
cool  weather,  rolls  and  coffee  were  served  to  them;  during  the 
summer,  ice  cream  and  cold  milk. 

The  Red  Cross  Canteen  Service  at  the  Port  of  Embarkation 
was  at  first  an  organization  of  four  women,  Mrs.  Roy  Rainey 
and  Mrs.  J.  Ellsworth  of  New  York  and  Mrs.  Palmer 
Campbell  and  Mrs.  Franklin  Hart,  Jr.,  of  Hoboken,  New 
Jersey.  At  the  time  of  the  armistice  the  service  mustered  over 


270  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

three  hundred  devoted  women,  of  whom  a  hundred  and  twenty 
were  stationed  at  the  piers  of  New  York,  sixty  at  Newport 
News,  and  the  rest  at  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Mon- 
treal, and  Halifax.  The  women  who  enlisted  for  this  service, 
many  of  them  New  York  society  women  unused  to  rough  work, 
agreed  to  give  their  full  time.  The  life  was  arduous.  It  required 
all  canteen  workers  to  be  on  the  piers  and  ready  for  business 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  which  meant  rising  at  four.  It 
is  of  record  that  throughout  the  entire  embarkation  not  one 
of  the  women  ever  reported  late. 

The  soldiers  on  the  piers  consumed  enormous  quantities 
of  supplies.  The  Red  Cross  installed  at  Hoboken  the  largest 
coffee-distilling  plant  in  the  world,  and  then  put  in  a  bigger 
one  at  the  Chelsea  piers  on  the  New  York  side  of  the  river. 
A  single  day's  embarkation  at  New  York  often  called  for  the 
serving  of  ten  tons  of  hot  liquid  coffee,  three  tons  of  rolls, 
about  a  ton  of  cigarettes,  and  several  hundredweight  of  ice 
cream  and  cookies.  This  refreshment  was  most  welcome  to  men 
who  had  spent  the  night  on  their  feet.  Many  a  time  it  turned 
a  cold  gray  dawn  into  a  rosy  one.  The  Port  of  Embarkation 
paid  official  tribute  to  this  service  for  its  wholesome  effect  upon 
the  morale  of  the  embarking  soldiers. 

After  the  men  had  visited  the  refreshment  tables,  the  Red 
Cross  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  workers  went  among  them  with  the 
"safe-arrival"  cards.  These  were  uniform,  printed  post  cards 
for  the  soldiers  merely  to  sign.  Each  read :  "The  ship  on  which 
I  sailed  has  arrived  safely  overseas."  No  date  appeared,  nor 
was  the  signer  permitted  to  write  in  the  name  of  his  organiza- 
tion. The  soldier  signed  and  addressed  as  many  of  these  cards 
as  he  chose,  and  kept  them  on  his  person  to  deposit  in  the  mili- 
tary mail  bag  which  he  would  later  pass  at  the  head  of  the 
gangplank.  Just  before  the  ship  sailed,  the  mail  bags  were 
taken  off.  The  Hoboken  military  post  office  bundled  the  "safe- 
arrival"  cards  together  and  held  them  pending  the  receipt,  a 
week  or  so  later,  of  the  cablegram  announcing  that  the  ship 
had  reached  Europe.  The  cards  were  then  forwarded  through 
the  regular  mail. 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  271 

In  the  ship  mail  bags  the  soldier  might  deposit,  not  only 
these  cards,  but  also  whatever  final  letters  he  might  wish  to 
write.  If  he  desired  his  letter  to  go  through  to  its  destination 
immediately,  he  deposited  it  unsealed.  It  then  went  to  the 
office  of  the  port  censor,  who  read  it  and,  if  it  contained  no 
contraband  information,  forwarded  it  at  once.  Sealed  letters 
the  censor  did  not  read,  but  he  did  not  forward  them  until  the 
transport  had  reached  England  or  France.  Commissioned  offi- 
cers and  army  nurses  were  permitted  to  write  out  "collect" 
telegrams  announcing  safe  arrival  overseas.  These  they  left 
at  the  port  post  office  to  be  filed  at  the  telegraph  office  when 
the  transport  reached  the  other  side  of  the  ocean. 

When  convoys  began  sailing  almost  daily  from  New  York, 
one  result  was  a  huge  accumulation  of  "hold"  mail — mail 
which  must  await  advices  from  Europe  before  it  could  be 
forwarded.  The  military  post  office  devised  a  system  for  han- 
dling it  so  as  both  to  preserve  the  secrecy  that  then  shrouded 
ocean  travel  and  to  maintain  the  identity  of  mail  and  prevent 
its  loss.  Just  before  a  ship  left  a  pier,  her  mail  bags  were 
collected.  The  unsealed  letters  were  then  sorted  out  for  cen- 
soring and  forwarding.  The  rest  was  sealed  in  sacks,  and  all 
the  sacks  were  marked  with  the  transport's  number.  We  have 
seen  that  each  troop  transport  went  by  number  rather  than  by 
name.  Leviathan  was  No.  22.  Mail  bags  taken  from  the 
Leviathan  were  marked  No.  22.  When  the  cablegram  an- 
nounced that  transport  No.  22  had  again  passed  safely  through 
the  war  zone,  all  the  No.  22  mail  bags  were  sent  to  the  regular 
post  office. 

At  Hoboken  there  was  only  one  instance  of  a  soldier  at- 
tempting to  send  out  information  calculated  to  be  of  aid  to 
the  enemy,  and  even  in  this  case  it  is  questionable  if  the  man's 
actions  were  criminal  or  only  foolish.  There  was  a  positive 
and  well-understood  order  at  the  piers  that  all  letters  must  be 
dropped  in  the  gangplank  mail  bags  and  nowhere  else.  This 
man  wrote  a  letter  and  paid  a  pier  stevedore  a  fee  to  post  it 
in  a  city  mail  box.  The  Intelligence  Service  at  Hoboken  dis- 
covered his  action  before  the  letter  reached  the  addressee.  The 


272  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

New  York  post  office  turned  its  forces  loose  on  a  hunt  which 
presently  found  the  missive.  It  proved  to  be  a  letter  addressed 
to  the  soldier's  wife  in  Brooklyn,  a  woman  born,  as  investiga- 
tion showed,  in  Germany.  The  letter  contained  a  full  list  of 
the  troops  on  the  transport  and  even  named  the  English  port 
to  which  the  ship  was  bound — probably  a  lucky  guess,  for  all 
convoys  sailed  under  sealed  orders,  and  even  the  convoy  com- 
mander did  not  know  his  destination  until  well  out  at  sea. 
The  soldier  was  arrested  and  taken  from  the  ship.  He  protested 
his  innocence,  declaring  that  he  was  unaware  of  the  regulation 
requiring  all  mail  to  be  deposited  in  the  ship  mail  sacks.  It 
was  impossible  to  prove  a  case  of  espionage  against  him;  but 
he  was  tried  by  court-martial  for  violating  the  order  pertain- 
ing to  the  mailing  of  letters,  convicted,  and  sentenced  to  serve 
a  term  in  the  penitentiary. 

At  the  piers  the  medical  officers  made  their  final  inspec- 
tions; and  sometimes,  even  at  this  last  hour,  they  took  out 
men  suspected  of  disease.  Personnel  officers  took  the  oppor- 
tunity to  make  a  final  inspection  of  the  nationality  of  embark- 
ing soldiers;  and  now  and  then  they  found  an  alien,  or  even 
an  enemy  alien,  who  had  slipped  through  all  previous 
inspections. 

Presently  the  force  of  gangplank  checkers  came  on  duty. 
Meanwhile  the  pier  laborers  had  brought  to  the  feet  of  all 
gangplanks  tall  desks  at  which  men  could  work  standing  up. 
Each  company  marched  to  the  gangplank  by  which  it  was  to 
board  the  boat.  The  company  commander  took  his  place  at  the 
desk,  the  men's  service  records  in  a  case  before  him.  In  front 
of  the  desk  stood  the  port  checking  officer;  at  his  elbow,  the 
first  sergeant  of  the  company.  Embarkation  proceeded  by 
squads.  The  command  was  right  or  left  by  files ;  and,  a  squad 
at  a  time,  the  men  approached  the  gangplank.  Passenger  list 
and  service  records  were  arranged  to  tally  with  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  men  in  their  squads.  When  a  squad  halted  before 
the  desk,  the  checking  officer  called  out  the  first  name  on  the 
passenger  list.  The  first  man  of  the  squad,  when  his  name  was 
called,  responded  by  repeating  his  name,  family  name  first. 


From  An  Official  Motion  Picture 

CHECKED  AGAINST  COMPANY  RECORDS 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

SHIP  BILLET  CARDS  AT   FOOT   OF  GANGPLANK 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  273 

given  name  and  middle  initial  afterwards.  He  had  previously 
received  instructions  to  speak  loudly  and  distinctly.  He  was 
then  ordered  to  ascend  the  gangplank,  and  the  checkers  called 
the  next  name.  If  any  soldier  were  absent  at  embarkation  time 
or  were  withdrawn  for  any  reason,  his  service  record  was  taken 
from  the  company  file  and  retained  by  the  embarkation  officers. 

As  each  man  passed  the  desk  he  received  a  billet  card  which 
noted  the  compartment  of  the  ship  in  which  he  was  to  be  quar- 
tered and  the  number  of  his  berth  in  that  compartment.  At 
the  top  of  the  gangplank  he  met  a  member  of  his  organiza- 
tion's advance  party,  who  escorted  him  to  his  bunk.  There  he 
was  told  to  remain  until  the  order  came  which  permitted  him  to 
go  on  deck.  During  the  greater  part  of  the  embarkation  period, 
soldiers  were  forbidden  to  appear  on  deck  until  the  ship  had 
reached  the  rendezvous  in  the  lower  bay.  Officers  were  ordered 
to  remain  with  their  men  during  this  interval.  The  sleepy 
men  usually  beguiled  the  enforced  imprisonment  by  turning 
in  for  much-needed  rest. 

All  through  the  early  months  our  transports  went  down  New 
York  Bay  without  a  soldier  visible  to  those  aboard  ferries  or 
other  harbor  craft  or  in  the  windows  of  the  tall  office  build- 
ings of  lower  Manhattan.  In  the  late  summer  of  1918,  the 
Government  gained  complete  confidence  in  its  ability  to  send 
transports  safely  past  the  enemy  submarines.  Moreover,  to 
depress  the  enemy  morale,  the  United  States  actually  wanted 
the  German  Government  to  know  the  high  rate  at  which  we 
were  sending  troops  to  France,  and  for  that  reason  it  made  no 
attempt  to  conceal  the  overseas  movement.  Each  transport 
went  down  the  river  crowned  with  olive  drab.  Cheering  sol- 
diers, thick  as  swarming  bees,  encrusted  her  rails,  lifeboats, 
ventilators,  even  her  rigging;  and  the  regimental  bands  played 
quicksteps  on  the  decks. 

The  final  act  in  embarking  a  company  was  to  gather  up  its 
baggage  detail  and  send  the  members  aboard.  Each  unit,  on  its 
arrival  at  the  pier,  sent  a  few  men  to  make  sure  that  all  com- 
pany baggage  was  loaded.  This  work  frequently  continued  up 
to  the  minute  of  sailing.  Meanwhile  the  company  commander 


274  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

remained  at  the  gangplank  desk  to  check  aboard  the  baggage 
detail.  After  these  last  individuals  had  passed  aboard,  the  port 
checking  officer  took  all  service  records  to  which  there  had 
been  no  men  to  correspond,  so  that  if  the  stragglers  reported 
later  they  would  find  records  waiting  for  them.  The  company 
commander  then  certified  in  writing  that  he  possessed  records 
for  every  man  embarked.  Even  on  ship  the  commander  kept 
the  record  cards  handy,  lest  at  the  last  minute  it  might  become 
necessary  for  the  Port  to  take  off  some  member  of  the  com- 
mand. During  the  influenza  epidemic,  hundreds  of  men  sus- 
pected of  having  the  sickness  were  removed,  even  after  the 
ships  had  gone  down  to  the  lower  bay. 

Casual  officers  were  checked  on  the  transports  in  much  the 
same  way,  except  that  the  port  organization  itself  made  out 
passenger  lists  for  them  and  prepared  their  credentials. 

The  pier  organization  grew  extremely  adept  in  its  work. 
It  could  easily  load  1,000  men  in  an  hour.  The  port  record 
was  250  men  checked  aboard  at  one  gangplank  in  seven  min- 
utes. The  greatest  day  in  the  history  of  the  Port  was  the 
twenty-four-hour  period  beginning  on  the  morning  of  August 
31,  1918.  In  that  time  the  port  organization  loaded  more  than 
51,000  troops  on  seventeen  transports.  This  was  the  largest 
number  of  passengers,  either  civilian  or  military,  that  ever 
sailed  from  any  one  seaport  in  any  one  day  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  An  appendix*  to  this  narrative  shows  the  transport 
sailings  from  New  York  from  the  1st  of  July,  1918,  to  the 
date  of  the  armistice.  It  will  be  noted  that  sixteen  vessels 
sailed  from  New  York  on  August  3 1  and  September  1 ;  and 
the  Aquitania,  listed  as  sailing  September  2,  but  actually 
loaded  on  September  1,  really  belongs  within  the  record 
twenty-four-hour  period. 

These  record  embarkation  days,  however,  were  not  to  be 
the  real  test  of  the  port  organization's  mettle.  Its  ordeal  by 
fire  was  the  interval  between  the  1st  day  of  November,  1918, 
and  the  hour  when  the  armistice  went  into  effect.  Scarcely  any 
troops  at  all  were  embarked  in  those  ten  days;  yet  they  were 

*  Appendix  E. 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  275 

the  most  memorable  in  the  history  of  the  Port  and  the  time  of 
its  most  signal  achievement. 

On  the  morning  of  November  1 ,  a  select  few  of  the  highest 
army  and  navy  officers  in  Washington  were  admitted  to  a 
most  startling  military  secret.  Our  Intelligence  Service  abroad 
had  gained  two  pieces  of  information  of  supreme  importance. 
The  first  was  that  the  dominant  party  in  Germany  was  ready 
to  sign  an  armistice,  no  matter  what  its  terms.  But  the  matter 
was  not  settled  yet,  for  the  bitter-end  element  favored  a  last 
desperate  measure  that  might  yet  turn  back  the  tide  of  defeat. 
This  measure  was  nothing  less  than  to  throw  the  German  navy 
at  the  Grand  Fleet  of  the  Allies  and  America.  Both  parties 
in  Germany  had  agreed  upon  this  course.  In  fact — and  this 
was  the  second  piece  of  information — the  German  Admiralty 
had  sent  the  order  to  its  fleet  to  go  out  to  victory  or  destruction. 

The  Secretary  of  War  at  once  decided  to  stop  further  em- 
barkations of  American  troops  for  France,  if  that  could  be  done 
without  a  word  of  the  truth  leaking  out.  There  were  several 
important  reasons  for  such  a  course.  Of  these,  the  financial  was 
the  slightest.  The  Government  was  not  pinching  pennies,  and 
the  cost  of  transporting  another  100,000  or  so  men  to  France 
made  little  difference,  although  it  was  an  element  in  the  situa- 
tion. A  graver  matter  was  the  impending  demobilization.  As 
peace  loomed,  Washington  realized  that  it  had  a  problem  on 
its  hands — to  bring  back  the  A.  E.  F.  More  than  half  that  great 
force  had  crossed  the  ocean  on  British  and  other  Allied  ships. 
Upon  the  conclusion  of  an  armistice,  the  British  Empire  would 
immediately  withdraw  her  ships  from  our  use  and  put  them  to 
work  returning  to  their  native  shores  her  own  home  and  colo- 
nial armies.  We  should  be  left  to  bring  back  our  own  men  in 
our  own  ships ;  ships  which,  loaded  to  capacity,  had  taken  more 
than  a  year  to  transport  to  France  less  than  half  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
Therefore  the  addition  of  even  a  single  man  to  that  force 
would  make  our  problem  of  demobilization  so  much  the  harder. 

But  both  these  reasons  together  would  not  have  war- 
ranted the  danger  incurred  by  the  Government's  decision  to 
stop  embarkation.  There  was  another  overmastering  consid- 


276  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

eration — a  paramount  one  which,  taken  alone,  would  have 
justified  the  step.  In  the  light  of  history,  we  have  to-day  the 
comfortable  knowledge  that  the  battle  order  to  the  German 
fleet  was  met  by  a  mutiny  which  touched  off  the  German 
revolution  and  cast  out  the  Hohenzollerns.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  on  November  1,  1918,  every  one  of  the  army 
and  navy  heads  who  had  received  the  secret  tidings  expected 
that  the  greatest  naval  engagement  of  all  time  was  at  hand, 
if  it  had  not  already  begun.  The  Government  had  every  con- 
fidence in  the  ability  of  the  Grand  Fleet  to  meet  the  issue;  but 
there  was  unquestionably  the  possibility  that  some  of  the 
German  ships  of  war  might  win  through  the  Allied  naval 
cordon  and  reach  the  open  Atlantic.  In  that  event  every  Ameri- 
can transport  at  sea  would  be  in  terrible  danger.  We  did  not 
protect  our  convoys  at  sea  against  armed  battleships.  The 
escort  was  protection  against  only  a  chance  merchant  raider 
of  the  enemy  and  against  submarines.  An  enemy  cruiser  could 
have  worked  havoc  in  one  of  our  troop  convoys.  When  you  con- 
sider that  our  embarkations,  even  at  the  average  rate,  meant  as 
many  as  150,000  American  soldiers  on  the  ocean  at  once,  you 
can  imagine  the  anxiety  of  those  in  Washington  who  knew  that 
a  naval  battle  was  imminent.  To  stop  embarkation  would  keep 
tens  of  thousands  of  American  boys  out  of  this  danger. 

Yet,  if  it  were  to  be  stopped,  the  action  must  be  taken  in 
complete  secrecy — secrecy  that  would  prevent  the  truth  from 
becoming  known,  not  only  to  the  enemy,  but  to  the  Allies  as 
well.  The  reason  for  keeping  the  information  from  the  enemy 
is  evident.  The  military  party  in  Germany  was  still  strong. 
If  the  junkers  discovered  that  we  had  stopped  embarking 
troops,  they  could  argue  that  America  was  not  so  strong  as  she 
appeared;  that  she  had  seized  the  first  rumor  of  peace  as  an 
excuse  to  bring  to  an  end  an  effort  which  must  evidently  be 
exhausting  her  resources  and  strength.  Such  an  argument  might 
induce  Germany  to  prolong  the  struggle. 

No  more  did  we  care  to  let  the  British  and  the  other  Allies 
learn  of  the  action.  The  escape  of  a  German  cruiser  or  two 
meant  no  such  disaster  to  any  one  of  the  Allies  as  it  might 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

LAST  LETTERS  HOME  BEFORE  SAILING  FOR  FRANCE 


From  An   Official  Motion   Picture 

MAIL  SACK  AT  HEAD  OF  GANGPLANK 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

TROOP  MAIL  AT  HOBOKEN  HELD  AWAITING  ARRIVAL  OF 
TRANSPORTS  IN  EUROPE 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

A  GANGPLANK  LEADING  INTO  U.  S.  A.  TRANSPORT 

LEVIATHAN 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  277 

possibly  mean  to  us.  Washington,  under  the  circumstances, 
regarded  the  stopping  of  embarkation  as  being  our  own  busi- 
ness and  a  step  justified  by  our  trust  in  the  reports  from  the 
Argonne  that  the  enemy's  line  was  broken  and  that  the  sever- 
ing of  his  communications  at  Sedan  was  imminent. 

On  that  momentous  morning  Brigadier  General  Hines,  the 
Chief  of  Embarkation,  was  called  into  conference  and  asked 
if  the  step  in  contemplation  were  possible  of  achievement. 
He  explained  the  difficulties  in  keeping  secret  so  radical  a 
departure.  If  only  our  own  transports  had  been  involved,  the 
matter  would  have  been  simple ;  but  more  than  half  the  troop- 
ships in  our  service  were  foreign,  owned  and  operated  by 
foreign  companies — British  companies  for  the  most  part.  When 
these  ships  began  leaving  our  ports  empty,  it  would  be  most 
difficult  to  keep  the  operating  companies  from  discovering  the 
truth.  Still,  General  Hines  declared  his  willingness  to  accept 
the  responsibility  for  the  success  or  failure  of  the  plan. 

His  instructions  to  the  Port  were  so  confidential  that  he 
did  not  dare  trust  them  to  the  usual  means  of  communication. 
He  confided  the  situation  to  his  chief  executive  officer.  Colonel 
Waddell,  and  sent  him  to  New  York  to  communicate  the  news 
and  the  orders  orally  to  the  Commander  of  the  Port,  and  to 
just  so  many  other  officers  as  had  to  be  let  into  the  secret. 
The  orders  were  for  the  Port  to  proceed  with  every  routine 
embarkation  function  as  usual,  stopping  just  short  of  checking 
the  troops  up  the  gangplanks.  Ships  should  be  sent  out  on 
schedule,  but  sent  empty.  German  agents,  if  they  were  watch- 
ing the  port,  would  see  nothing  out  of  the  ordinary. 

There  was  but  one  outsider  to  whom  the  truth  had  to  be 
told.  This  was  Major  P.  A.  Curry  of  the  British  Army,  acting 
as  New  York  embarkation  officer  for  the  British  Ministry  of 
Shipping.  Our  embarkation  officers  outlined  the  whole  plan 
to  Major  Curry  and  obtained  his  cooperation,  which  included 
his  promise  not  to  communicate  the  truth  to  his  home  govern- 
ment. If  London  pressed  him  irresistibly  for  an  explanation  of 
why  the  ships  were  empty,  then  he  had  our  permission  to  fasten 


278  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

the  blame  upon  an  alleged  failure  of  the  American  Embarka- 
tion Service  to  deliver  the  passengers. 

Of  the  agencies  of  the  Port,  the  dispatch  office  was  the  only- 
one  admitted  to  the  secret.  The  rest  of  the  great  organization 
rumbled  smoothly  on,  serenely  unaware  that,  for  Hoboken,  the 
war  was  over.  Not  even  the  entire  personnel  of  the  dispatch 
office  knew  what  was  going  on.  The  two  or  three  dispatch 
officers  in  the  secret  used  to  return  to  their  desks  at  night  after 
the  clerical  workers  had  gone,  to  write  and  send  the  telegrams 
which  kept  the  port  from  being  flooded  with  incoming  troops. 

At  the  time  of  the  order  to  stop  embarkations  there  were 
twenty-three  troopships  awaiting  their  loads  in  New  York 
harbor.  The  advance  parties  of  a  number  of  overseas  units 
had  gone  on  board  some  of  them.  The  port  officers  made  one 
excuse  after  another  to  explain  to  the  British  captains  why 
the  troops  did  not  come — this  unit  had  been  quarantined  be- 
cause of  the  influenza,  that  one  was  held  up  by  lack  of  equip- 
ment. Sailing  day  arrived  for  a  British  convoy  of  seven  ships; 
no  postponement  was  thinkable.  Major  Curry  went  to  the 
convoy  commander  and,  with  well-simulated  disgust,  told  him 
to  start  out  without  passengers — the  Embarkation  Service  had 
fallen  down.  The  convoy  sailed.  It  was  then  the  discreet 
major's  duty  to  cable  his  government  the  passenger  lists,  so 
that  the  English  ports  might  make  their  arrangements  for 
accommodating  the  troops.  He  was  strangely  derelict  in  per- 
forming this  routine  task.  Day  by  day  the  Admiralty  in 
London  cabled  more  insistently  for  the  lists.  Major  Curry 
remained  uncommunicative  until  the  convoy  was  but  twenty- 
four  hours  off  the  English  coast;  then  he  cabled  laconically 
that  no  troops  had  sailed  on  the  convoy,  and  that  the  American 
War  Department  would  explain.  Not  until  after  the  armistice 
did  the  British  Government  learn  that  we  had  ceased  to  ship 
soldiers  on  November  1.  The  Distinguished  Service  Medal 
awarded  to  Major  Curry  by  the  American  Government  was 
largely  a  tribute  to  his  discretion  during  the  first  eleven  days 
of  November. 

On  November  1  troops  at  two  interior  camps  were  about  to 


THE  PROCESS  OF  EMBARKATION  279 

start  for  Montreal  and  Quebec,  there  to  embark  upon  British 
ships.  The  Hoboken  dispatch  office  canceled  their  travel  orders 
by  wire  and  notified  the  British  ship  captains  not  to  wait  for 
their  passengers.  It  was  safe  to  countermand  embarkation 
orders  to  troops  in  the  interior  of  the  country,  for  it  had  often 
been  done.  The  dispatch  office  was  therefore  able  to  stop  all 
travel  toward  the  port  without  giving  anyone  an  inkling  of 
the  true  situation.  Fortunately,  not  many  organizations  were 
scheduled  for  embarkation  at  this  time.  The  heavy  movements 
of  the  summer  had  virtually  exhausted  the  supply  of  trained 
troops  in  the  United  States.  In  late  October  the  Port  was  em- 
barking chiefly  supply  troops,  labor  battalions,  and  other  or- 
ganizations which  did  not  require  extensive  training.  At  the 
end  of  October  the  Eighth  Division,  whose  travel  to  the  port 
from  Camp  Fremont,  California,  we  have  already  cited,  was 
making  its  way  to  France.  The  8th  Infantry,  a  member  of  the 
Eighth  Division,  was  the  last  combat  unit  to  go  overseas.  The 
other  three  infantry  regiments  of  the  Eighth  Division  were 
held  in  Camps  Merritt  and  Mills  and,  after  the  armistice,  sent 
to  interior  camps  for  demobilization. 

It  was  more  difficult  to  conceal  the  stoppage  from  troops  rest- 
ing in  the  embarkation  camps.  In  the  aviation  camp  at  Garden 
City,  Long  Island,  was  a  squadron  of  aviators  most  anxious 
to  get  to  France.  Three  times  they  sent  their  baggage  down 
to  the  port,  and  three  times  the  Port  sent  it  back  again,  each 
time  with  the  excuse  that  the  transport  was  held  for  repairs  to 
her  machinery.  In  spite  of  all  precautions,  the  rumor  went  forth 
that  something  unusual  was  going  on  at  Hoboken.  When  the 
order  came  to  stop  embarkations,  the  advance  parties  of  several 
troop  organizations  were  already  on  the  transports.  The  port 
administration  withdrew  these  parties  and  sent  them  back  to 
the  embarkation  camps.  The  news  of  this  occurrence  ran  swiftly 
to  the  New  York  newspaper  offices.  Within  a  short  time  a  body 
of  news  correspondents  besieged  General  Hines  in  Washington 
for  an  explanation.  The  general  looked  his  questioners  in  the 
eyes  and  told  them  that  they  were  on  a  false  trail — that  no 
troops  had  been  pulled  off  any  transports.  Then  the  general 


28o  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

privately  called  Hoboken  by  telephone  and  ordered  the  ad- 
vance parties  put  back  on  the  ships  in  a  hurry,  before  the  news- 
papers could  check  up  the  truth  of  his  statement. 

Fortune  is  said  to  favor  the  bold.  The  German  sailors 
mutinied  rather  than  face  the  Grand  Fleet.  General  Pershing 
cut  the  enemy  communications  at  Sedan.  And  the  new  German 
republic  signed  the  armistice,  thereby  ending  a  suspense  which 
was  becoming  unendurable  in  certain  quarters  in  Washington. 
Any  least  slip-up,  however, — a  German  victory  at  sea,  a  Ger- 
man stand  in  the  field,  even  a  partial  enemy  success  that  would 
have  prolonged  the  fighting, — and  those  responsible  for  the 
cessation  of  embarkation,  no  matter  how  well  justified  their 
course,  would  have  had  to  face  the  country  with  the  admission 
that  the  American  troop  program  had  been  set  back  two  weeks 
or  a  month  as  a  result  of  it. 


CHAPTER  XX 
SOME  NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES 

SECRET  panels  that  open  to  the  touch  of  hidden  springs, 
I  stairways  concealed  in  unlooked-for  places — we  are  in 
the  realm  of  the  mysterious.  And  not  in  the  palace  of  an 
ancient  intriguing  Venetian  doge,  as  you  might  suspect,  nor 
yet  in  some  mediaeval  Norman  castle,  but  in  the  very  heart  of 
commercial  America — in  the  offices  of  the  Hamburg-American 
Steamship  Company,  at  No.  45  Broadway  in  the  city  of  New 
York. 

When  the  Government,  upon  the  declaration  of  war,  seized 
the  American  properties  of  the  German  transatlantic  lines,  it 
fell  heir  not  only  to  the  system  of  modem  piers  on  the  New 
Jersey  side  of  the  North  River,  but  also  to  the  office  building 
put  up  on  lower  Broadway  by  the  Hamburg-American  Line 
and  occupied  by  it  for  a  number  of  years.  For  several  months 
thereafter  the  building  remained  tenantless.  In  November  the 
New  York  branch  of  the  War  Trade  Board  moved  into  a 
section  of  offices  on  the  street  floor  of  the  building;  but  the 
upper  stories  continued  to  gather  dust  and  to  echo  only  to  the 
occasional  tread  of  watchmen.  Then  the  port  organization, 
outgrowing  its  quarters  at  the  Hoboken  docks,  sought  space 
for  expansion.  It  sent  its  construction  forces  to  renovate  the 
building  and  put  it  in  order  for  occupancy.  When  the  repair 
men  came  to  examine  the  building,  they  made  some  discoveries. 
With  its  cherry-red  woodwork  and  walls  tinted  in  strong 
shades,  the  building  was  somewhat  more  ornate  than  the  usual 
American  office  building.  It  had  spacious  halls,  high-ceiled 
rooms  of  generous  dimensions,  and  broad  windows  looking  out 
upon  the  bay  and  the  mouth  of  the  North  River.  The  reno- 
vators found  the  chief  executive  office  wainscoted  to  the  ceil- 
ing in  rich  mahogany.  As  the  workmen  explored  along  the 


282  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

walls,  their  fingers  touched  unobtrusive  buttons,  whereupon 
panels  swung  open.  One  such  door  concealed  a  strong  fireproof 
safe.  Another  opened  into  a  hidden  elevator  shaft  in  which 
moved  an  automatic  electric  cage  down  to  a  basement  passage- 
way, which  in  turn  led  to  a  rear  exit.  By  this  route  a  man 
could  leave  office  and  building  quite  unobserved  by  possible 
watchers  on  the  busy  thoroughfare  on  which  the  building 
fronted.  Still  a  third  panel  covered  a  dumb-waiter  shaft  con- 
necting with  a  mezzanine  kitchen  above,  which  could  be 
reached  by  a  private  stairway.  An  exploration  revealed  com- 
modious pantries  and  refrigerators.  It  was  evident  that  the 
former  occupants  of  the  executive  office  were  prepared  to 
stand  a  considerable  siege. 

In  the  spring  of  1918  the  Government  occupied  the  whole 
of  this  building.  The  Navy  took  an  entire  floor.  The  important 
Shipping  Control  Committee  occupied  six  floors.  The  United 
States  Shipping  Board,  the  United  States  Railroad  Adminis- 
tration, and  other  official  agencies  all  took  space ;  and  the  Army 
Transport  Service  (later  to  be  known  as  the  Port  and  Zone 
Transportation  Office)  occupied  the  rest  and  hung  its  sign 
above  the  Broadway  entrance. 

The  prime  and  obvious  business  of  the  Port  of  Embarka- 
tion was  to  embark  troops  and  to  ship  supplies  to  France ;  but 
the  successful  conduct  of  this  work  entailed  the  prosecution  of 
a  host  of  related  enterprises.  There  was  the  task  of  superintend- 
ing the  entire  port  personnel,  a  staff  which  at  one  time  included 
close  to  40,000  men  and  women.  The  inspection  of  troops  and 
of  their  equipment  created  another  major  activity  at  the  port. 
The  Port  had  its  own  lawyers  and  courts.  One  set  of  advocates 
concerned  themselves  with  purely  military  cases.  Another  set 
devoted  their  attention  to  the  innumerable  questions  of  admi- 
ralty law  that  arose  in  the  operation  of  the  transport  fleets. 
The  port  surgeon  administered  camp  and  base  hospitals,  in- 
spected troops  for  physical  disability,  received  and  trans- 
ported the  sick  and  wounded,  and  operated  harbor  hospital 
boats  and  hospital  trains.  He  also  assigned  medical  officers  to 
the  troopships.  This  complete  travel  agency,  the  Embarka- 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        283 

tion  Service,  even  supplied  spiritual  and  doctrinal  comfort 
to  its  voyagers,  by  placing  chaplains  at  the  embarkation 
camps  and  on  the  transports.  The  port  chaplain  also  super- 
vised the  many  welfare  activities  at  the  port.  Another  sec- 
tion administered  the  storage  of  materials  awaiting  ocean 
transit.  Another  employed  and  directed  the  gangs  of  steve- 
dores at  the  freight  docks.  A  branch  of  the  Port,  with 
nearly  6,000  military  and  civilian  employees,  built  and 
kept  in  repair  the  hundreds  of  structures  which  housed 
the  organization.  The  great  Port  and  Zone  Transportation 
Office  chartered  the  army  transports,  repaired  the  cargo  trans- 
ports and  provided  crews  for  them,  secured  and  operated  whole 
fleets  of  harbor  boats,  and  rendered  many  other  important  ser- 
vices. Another  organization  made  out  the  pay  checks.  There 
were  boards  of  survey  to  estimate  the  deterioration  of  char- 
tered ships,  for  the  Government's  guidance  in  its  settlements 
with  the  owners.  There  were  survey  officers  to  fix  the  amount 
of  damages  done  to  ships  and  cargoes  in  accidents.  In  short, 
the  New  York  Port  of  Embarkation  was  comparable  in  size 
to  some  of  the  largest  industrial  enterprises  in  the  United 
States.  If  you  include  the  crews  of  cargo  transports  and  the 
forces  of  machinists  and  laborers  at  the  various  harbor  repair 
shops  and  ship  railways,  the  port  activities  gave  employment 
to  nearly  100,000  individuals. 

It  is  beyond  the  scope  of  this  narrative  to  describe  the  intri- 
cacies of  the  organization;  to  show  how,  as  the  work  grew, 
various  activities  came  together  under  certain  heads,  sprang 
apart  again  like  the  luminous  particles  in  a  kaleidoscope,  and 
re-formed  once  more  in  other  combinations.  The  port  organiza- 
tion was  no  rigid  institution.  It  kept  experimenting  with  dif- 
ferent forms  of  control  in  an  attempt  to  approximate  the  ideal. 

One  of  the  earliest  undertakings  of  the  Port  was  to  provide 
quarters  for  itself.  The  Port's  construction  division  attended 
to  this  matter.  Its  first  task  was  to  build  a  group  of  structures 
in  the  yards  at  the  Hoboken  piers  and  to  add  a  third  story 
to  a  long  section  of  the  pier  bulkhead  building,  all  of  this 
new  space  for  occupancy  by  port  headquarters  and  by  branches 


284  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

whose  work  was  at  the  piers.  The  Port  Commander  had  his 
office  in  the  bulkhead  building.  The  constructors  extended  into 
the  pier  yards  a  railroad  track  which  connected  with  the 
Hoboken  Shore  Railroad.  Troops  which  came  to  the  ships 
directly  from  their  training  camps  were  sometimes  brought  in 
to  the  piers  on  this  track. 

The  construction  division  also  had  charge  of  the  Army's 
harbor  dredging.  When  the  Government  undertook  to  move 
the  great  steamer  Vaterland^  later  renamed  Leviathan^  from 
her  berth  at  Hoboken,  it  found  that  she  was  fast  in  the  mud. 
The  construction  division  put  in  dredges  and  in  four  days 
cleared  out  the  slip.  Thereafter  the  division  operated  a  squad- 
ron of  dredges  that  kept  the  army  slips  unobstructed.  Even- 
tually the  port  builders  constructed  a  great  development  enter- 
prise of  erecting  groups  of  piers  and  warehouses  on  the  Jersey 
and  Brooklyn  water  fronts  and  putting  up  barracks  in  various 
places  in  the  metropolitan  district.  When  the  Army  occupied 
several  of  the  Bush  freight  piers  in  South  Brooklyn,  the  port 
constructors  fenced  in  that  great  terminal  and  flood-lighted 
the  stockade  so  that  skulkers  by  night  could  not  approach 
undetected. 

The  Port  and  Zone  Transportation  Office  managed  the 
ferry-boats  used  in  the  transportation  of  troops  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Port,  and  also  operated  all  other  harbor 
craft  used  by  the  Army.  After  the  armistice,  the  Port  and  Zone 
Transportation  Office  took  over  bodily  a  great  part  of  the 
organization  and  duties  of  the  Shipping  Control  Committee, 
including  the  function  of  loading  military  freight  on  trans- 
ports. 

The  whole  Atlantic  commercial  equipment  of  lighters,  tugs, 
car  floats,  and  small  passenger  steamers  did  not  measure  up  to 
the  needs  of  military  shipping  in  1918.  The  Embarkation 
Service  bought  and  chartered  all  the  suitable  harbor  craft  it 
could  find,  and  then  found  itself  confronting  the  necessity 
of  building  more.  There  was  no  established  industry  to  which 
the  Service  could  turn  and  order  new  floating  stock,  nor  was 
there  any  'Other  branch  of  the  Army  which  could  supply  it; 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        285 

and  the  Service  showed  its  versatility  by  going  ahead  and 
building  its  own  harbor  boats.  In  this  work  the  Service  recog- 
nized the  world's  desperate  need  of  ocean  tonnage.  It  proved 
its  recognition  by  putting  no  additional  demand  upon  ship- 
yards which  were  launching  hulls  for  the  United  States  Ship- 
ping Board,  for  the  Navy,  or  for  any  other  government  branch 
(and  practically  all  existing  American  shipyards  were  engaged 
in  such  work) .  Rather,  it  allotted  its  contracts  entirely  to  new 
yards  created  expressly  to  serve  it. 

Nor  did  the  Service  wish  to  compete  extensively  for  steel, 
so  vital  to  other  war  activities.  Therefore  it  built  just  as  few 
steel  vessels  as  possible.  It  specified  wood  construction  for  the 
hulls  of  such  small  boats  as  junior  mine  planters,  motor  tugs, 
and  troop  launches;  and  then  it  stepped  clear  outside  standard 
shipbuilding  practice  and  adopted  for  the  rest  of  its  equip- 
ment the  new  reinforced  concrete  construction  which  was  then 
beginning  to  intrigue  the  attention  of  the  marine  world.  The 
Embarkation  Service  was  not  only  one  of  the  American 
pioneers  in  building  boats  of  concrete,  but  it  attained  more 
success  in  this  direction  than  any  other  large  constructor,  public 
or  private. 

Having  complete  military  jurisdiction  over  all  its  harbors, 
the  Embarkation  Service  was  required  to  defend  those  harbors 
against  possible  enemy  attack.  The  only  attack  anticipated 
was  by  submarines.  Part  of  the  harbor  defenses  were  mine 
fields  at  the  approaches;  and  the  Service  was  presently 
operating  a  fleet  of  mine  planters,  large  and  small. 

As  the  experience  of  the  Embarkation  Service  broadened,  it 
began  to  make  greater  use  of  port  waters  in  the  transportation 
of  troops;  and  thus  it  removed  from  the  terminal  railways 
some  of  their  war-imposed  burden.  Its  success  in  bringing 
troops  to  New  York  piers  from  Camp  Merritt  by  the  Hudson 
River  caused  the  Service  to  extend  its  use  of  natural  water- 
ways. Before  the  armistice  came,  experimental  embarkation 
from  Camp  Lee  in  Virginia  had  used  the  James  River  as  a 
highway  between  the  camp  and  the  piers  at  Newport  News. 
One  outgrowth  of  this  policy  was  a  scheme  to  build  a  fleet 


286  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

of  river  steamers  designed  for  carrying  large  numbers  of 
passengers. 

The  Embarkation  Service  ordered  thirteen  vessels  of  steel 
construction — nine  large  mine  planters,  each  172  feet  long, 
and  four  river  steamers,  each  130  feet  long.  These  were 
turned  out  by  the  quantity-production  method  known  as 
"fabricated"  ship  construction;  that  is,  the  standard  parts  were 
manufactured  in  shops  and  then  assembled  into  hulls  on  the 
launching  ways.  The  contract  for  all  thirteen  went  to  the 
Fabricated  Ship  Corporation,  of  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  which 
created  a  new  shipyard  for  the  task.  The  company  built  parts 
in  its  own  shops  and  let  sub-contracts  to  manufactories  located 
some  miles  away  from  the  shipyard.  Because  plates  came  to 
the  ways  shaped  and  ready  for  the  rivets,  the  system  resulted 
not  only  in  uniformity  of  construction  but  also  in  great  speed. 
The  contract  for  the  so-called  "junior"  mine  planters — eight 
boats,  each  98  feet  long — was  taken  by  the  Defoe  Boat  & 
Motor  Works,  of  Bay  City,  Michigan,  which  also  established 
a  new  yard. 

When  men  first  proposed  to  build  iron  ships,  doubtless  there 
were  skeptics  who  derided  the  notion  that  safe  and  seaworthy 
vessels  could  ever  be  made  of  so  heavy  and  sinkable  a  sub- 
stance. When  it  was  proposed  to  construct  vessels  of  reinforced 
concrete,  men  could  likewise  be  found  who  maintained  that 
the  "stone"  boats  would  be,  because  of  their  ponderous  weight, 
either  unseaworthy  or  else  unwieldy  and  uneconomical  in 
operation.  Although  concrete  hulls  are  indeed  heavier  than 
steel  hulls  of  the  same  dimensions,  the  actual  use  of  such  ves- 
sels had  demonstrated  their  practicability;  and  at  a  time  when 
the  nation's  needs  could  scarcely  endure  any  additional  de- 
mand for  steel,  the  utility  of  concrete  construction  for  harbor 
craft  was  a  veritable  salvation. 

The  weight  of  a  concrete  boat,  after  all,  is  not  so  much 
greater  than  that  of  a  steel  boat  of  the  same  size  as  one  would 
think.  The  concrete  hull  walls  are  made  surprisingly  thin.  In 
most  of  the  craft  launched  by  the  contractors  of  the  Embarka- 
tion Service,  the  exterior  concrete  covering  of  the  reinforcing 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        287 

bars  did  not  exceed  three-quarters  of  an  inch  in  thickness.  To 
mold  concrete  with  such  precision  required,  of  course,  con- 
structive skill  of  the  first  order. 

The  Service  concluded  a  contract  with  the  Great  Northern 
Shipbuilding  Company,  of  Vancouver,  Washington,  for  the 
construction  of  five  concrete  water- tank  boats,  each  100  feet 
long.  To  the  Newport  Shipbuilding  Company  went  another 
contract  to  build  nine  concrete  river  vessels,  each  130  feet 
long,  at  a  new  yard  at  Newbern,  North  Carolina.  These  river 
vessels  were  to  be  in  the  service  of  the  Newport  News  Port  of 
Embarkation.  A  third  contract  for  six  concrete  car  floats,  each 
265  feet  long,  went  to  the  L.  B.  Harrison  Shipyards  (Inc.),  at 
Athens,  New  York,  and  an  identical  contract  to  the  Liberty 
Shipbuilding  &  Transportation  Company  of  Cleveland,  Ohio. 
Each  one  of  these  contractors  set  up  new  shipyards  for  the 
construction. 

In  appearance,  the  concrete  boats  differed  little  from  steel 
craft  of  the  same  types.  The  service  designers  made,  in  the 
accepted  curves  and  lines  of  hulls,  no  concessions  to  concrete. 
The  river  boats  were  built  on  the  lines  of  standard  steel  ships, 
except  that  the  sections  amidships  were  practically  square  for 
about  one-fourth  of  each  vessel's  length.  The  car  floats  were 
rectangular  in  shape,  but  curved  slightly  at  the  bilge  and  had 
raked  ends.  In  fact,  in  all  its  ship  construction  the  Embarka- 
tion Service  considered  the  day  when  the  Government  might 
want  to  sell  these  vessels  to  private  concerns.  Every  vessel  was 
so  designed  that  the  possible  private  purchaser  could  some  day 
use  it  in  ordinary  commerce  and  find  no  difficulty  in  placing 
insurance  upon  it. 

The  launching  of  a  concrete  vessel  is  a  matter  of  careful 
engineering  calculation.  It  is  usually  launched  sideways,  and 
great  is  its  list  before  it  regains  equilibrium.  The  Embarka- 
tion Service  was  the  first  to  launch  large  concrete  vessels  end  on. 
Several  of  the  car  floats  took  the  water  in  this  way.  Certain 
engineers  who  witnessed  the  first  of  these  end-on  launchings 
confidently  expected  to  see  the  new  float  break  in  two  and  sink 
as  soon  as  its  bow  struck  the  water;  but  the  designers  were 


288  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

sure  of  their  calculations,  and  they  awaited  the  result  with 
confidence.  The  sagging  or  "hogging"  stress  which  end-on 
launching  puts  upon  the  midship  section  of  such  a  long  and 
shallow-draft  boat  as  a  car  float  is  tremendous.  As  the  forward 
end  of  the  hull  goes  into  the  water  and  is  buoyed  up  by  it,  it 
is  precisely  as  if  the  craft  were  picked  up  by  one  end  on  the 
sole  support  of  the  other  end.  In  the  steel  of  the  first  concrete 
car  float  launched  endwise,  the  strainagraph,  a  special  instru- 
ment for  recording  stresses  in  construction  members,  regis- 
tered a  stress  of  4,000  pounds  to  the  square  inch.  But  this 
stress  was  well  within  the  strength  of  the  vessel,  which  neither 
buried  its  nose  under  water  nor  gave  way  amidships. 

The  Service  pioneered  elsewhere  in  concrete  construction.  It 
made  the  first  adaptation  of  reinforcing  to  the  inherent  require- 
ments of  the  hull.  In  previous  concrete  construction  the  rein- 
forcing bars  had  been  allowed  to  follow  the  converging  lines 
of  the  hull  and  to  come  thickly  together  at  bow  and  stern, 
thus  actually  making  them  stronger  than  the  midship  sections, 
where  heavier  strains  occur.  The  marine  architects  of  the  Em- 
barkation Service  reduced  the  reinforcing  at  the  ends  of  vessels 
and  thereby  made  the  hulls  approximately  18  per  cent  lighter, 
with  an  actual  gain  in  strength. 

Pouring  the  concrete  in  marine  construction  is  a  delicate 
operation.  The  concrete  forms  or  molds  must  be  built  for  prac- 
tically the  entire  hull  before  any  concrete  can  go  in;  for  after 
the  pouring  starts,  it  must  continue  until  the  entire  hull  is 
poured,  to  avoid  the  joints  that  result  from  pouring  wet  con- 
crete upon  hard.  The  shell  of  a  concrete  vessel  is  so  thin  that 
only  100-per-cent  accuracy  in  the  placing  of  forms  will  result 
in  a  successful  hull.  Extraordinary  precautions  must  be  taken 
to  prevent  the  forms  from  spreading  away  from  the  pressure 
of  the  concrete  as  it  is  being  poured  in.  This  spreading  the 
Service  engineers  avoided  by  running  certain  reinforcing  bars 
of  the  deck  through  the  side  molds  as  tie  rods.  (The  projecting 
ends  were  used  later  for  fastening  the  wooden  fenders  on  the 
exterior  of  the  hull.)  Nor  could  concrete  be  dumped  in  care- 
lessly, as  in  ordinary  construction.  Precautions  had  to  be  taken 


From    The   War   College  Collection 


REINFORCING  RODS  LAID  IN  CONCRETE  SHIP 
CONSTRUCTION 


KAPOK  LIFE  PRESERVERS,  JACKET  TYPE,  SUPPLIED 
TO  TRANSPORTS 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

LIFE  PRESERVERS  ON  LEVIATHAN 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

LIFE  RAFTS  ON  HOBOKEN  ARMY  PIER 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        289 

to  secure  an  absolute  consistency  of  mixture,  without  interior 
cavities  or  holes.  This  consistency  was  obtained  by  battering 
against  the  forms  with  electric  and  pneumatic  hammers,  the 
jar  packing  the  mixture  and  filling  all  interstices. 

The  Embarkation  Service  also  designed  a  cargo  barge  of 
hollow  tile  and  reinforced  concrete.  The  hollow  tile  bottom, 
covered  with  concrete  above  and  below,  besides  making  the 
craft  practically  puncture-proof,  allowed  smooth  concrete 
floors  in  the  hold,  upon  which  power  shovels  could  operate 
in  the  unloading  of  coal  and  other  bulk  commodities. 

One  of  the  extensive  activities  at  the  New  York  Port  of 
Embarkation  was  the  supply  and  inspection  of  life-saving 
equipment  for  the  troop  transports.  America  sent  across  the 
Atlantic  many  ships  loaded  with  men  as  ships  had  never  been 
loaded  before.  The  torpedoing  of  one  of  these  vessels  would 
have  been  a  terrible  disaster  to  the  United  States ;  yet  the  loss 
of  life  might  not  have  been  so  great  as  the  military  authori- 
ties feared.  To  stack  upon  one  of  the  great  ships  enough  life- 
boats to  hold  passengers  and  crew  was  physically  impossible. 
But  lifeboats,  life  rafts,  and  life  preservers  collectively  pro- 
vided floatage  for  every  man  aboard  even  the  more  heavily 
loaded  transports.  If  a  rescue  came  speedily  after  a  sinking, 
most  of  the  human  cargo  might  have  been  saved. 

The  Government's  sudden  decision  in  April,  1918,  to 
increase  embarkation  to  the  rate  of  300,000  men  a  month 
taxed  to  the  utmost  the  ability  of  the  port  utilities  office, 
which  had  charge  of  life-saving  equipment.  The  decision  threw 
into  our  transport  service  an  immense  Allied  merchant  ton- 
nage, and  the  War  Department  would  not  permit  one  of  these 
foreign  ships  to  sail  with  troops  unless  it  possessed  life-saving 
equipment  up  to  the  American  army  standard.  The  Govern- 
ment, instead  of  donating  equipment  to  the  British,  French, 
and  Italian  vessel  companies,  sold  it  to  them  after  the  Port 
of  Embarkation  had  procured  it.  During  the  period  of  overseas 
sailings  the  port  utilities  office  bought  thousands  of  life  rafts 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  life  preservers. 

The  office  also  supervised  the  frequent  cleansing  of  life 


290  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

preservers.  American  troops  were  required  by  order  to  wear 
their  life  belts  continuously  night  and  day,  sleeping  and  awake, 
while  their  transports  were  passing  through  the  war  zone — 
and  the  average  transport  was  in  it  seventy- two  hours.  The 
Medical  Corps  therefore  insisted  that  the  preservers  be  fre- 
quently washed  and  sterilized. 

In  the  autumn  of  1918,  just  after  influenza  had  broken  out 
in  this  country,  a  convoy  carrying  46,000  men  was  about  to 
sail  for  France.  The  port  utilities  office  had  approved  the  life- 
saving  equipment.  The  life  preservers  were  not  dirty,  but  they 
had  been  worn  on  one  previous  voyage,  since  which  they  had 
not  passed  through  the  laundry.  The  convoy  was  to  sail  on 
Saturday.  On  the  Thursday  before,  the  Surgeon  General  con- 
demned the  complete  equipment  of  life  preservers  on  the  con- 
voy and  demanded  that  sterilized  equipment  be  substituted. 
The  utilities  office,  in  a  hasty  inventory  of  its  stores,  discovered 
only  4,000  life  belts  in  stock.  There  was  not  enough  time  to 
clean  the  condemned  life  belts.  The  utilities  officers  began  to 
comb  the  metropolitan  manufacturing  district  for  possible 
supplies  of  new  life  preservers  which  had  been  overlooked  in 
previous  purchases.  In  New  Jersey  they  discovered  a  manu- 
facturer who  by  mistake  had  made  25,000  kapok  life  belts 
more  than  he  had  needed  to  fill  a  previous  government  con- 
tract. The  Port  bought  these  belts  outright  and  rushed  all  its 
available  motor  trucks  to  the  factory  in  Newark.  The  truck- 
ing force  freighted  life  preservers  day  and  night.  This  find, 
together  with  the  4,000  life  preservers  on  hand,  brought  the 
available  supply  up  to  nearly  30,000;  but  it  still  left  a  short- 
age of  16,000. 

Then  the  utilities  officers  made  by  telephone  a  systematic 
canvass  of  the  trade.  They  succeeded  in  picking  up  five  hundred 
life  belts  here  and  a  thousand  there;  but  even  after  they  had 
literally  swept  the  trade  clean,  there  was  still  a  shortage.  Mean- 
while the  office  had  been  cleaning  and  sterilizing  as  many  of  the 
condemned  preservers  as  it  could;  and,  to  swell  the  volume 
of  this  work,  it  temporarily  chartered  the  plants  of  several 
large  carpet-cleaning  establishments  in  New  York  and  oper- 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        291 

ated  them  for  two  days  and  nights.  The  office  was  working  in 
the  sure  knowledge  that  if  it  failed  to  provide  the  life  preserv- 
ers in  time,  the  embarkation  authorities  would  be  forced  to 
hold  the  convoy  in  port.  No  ship  could  sail  without  satisfactory 
emergency  floatage  for  every  man  aboard.  But  the  utilities 
office  did  not  fail.  The  convoy  sailed  at  the  scheduled  hour 
with  complete  life-saving  equipment  which  had  passed  the 
inspection  of  the  Surgeon  General's  department.  To  be  sure, 
the  utilities  office  had  exceeded  its  authority  in  the  emergency : 
only  the  Division  of  Purchase  in  Washington  was  empowered 
to  buy  life  preservers.  But  the  War  Department  granted,  as  in 
other  like  instances,  ex  post  facto  authority  for  the  transaction. 
Thus  the  Port  passed  triumphantly  through  another  crisis. 

The  Port  of  Embarkation  maintained  a  disbursing  office  at 
New  York  to  pay  all  embarking  officers  and  men  up  to  the 
date  of  their  sailings.  The  payment  was  made,  conveniently, 
in  either  francs  or  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence,  so  that  the 
soldiers  would  have  no  trouble  with  the  money  changers  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  Port  disbursed  millions  of 
dollars  in  the  payment  of  transient  individuals  and  organi- 
zations. 

The  Navy  operated  most  of  the  American  troop  carriers  and 
incidentally  supplied  the  food  eaten  by  our  soldiers  on  their 
voyages  in  such  ships.  Yet,  by  one  of  the  queer  inconsistencies 
of  an  organization  so  large  and  intricate  as  the  Embarkation 
Service,  the  New  York  Port  of  Embarkation  supplied  food 
stores  to  several  of  the  American  transports  throughout  the 
heaviest  period  of  travel  and  until  June,  1919.  The  value  of 
the  stores  so  supplied  was  close  to  $3,000,000.  The  port  utili- 
ties office  took  care  of  this  work.  It  also  operated  the  great 
port  bakery  in  Brooklyn,  and  provided  the  food  and  the  daily 
menus  for  the  crews  of  all  army  harbor  craft. 

It  required  a  special  organization  at  the  port  to  give  the 
releases  on  which  the  Inland  Traffic  Service  based  its  War 
Department  Transportation  Orders,  the  potent  instruments, 
it  will  be  remembered,  that  cleared  away  the  great  eastern 
freight  car  congestion  in  early  1918.  This  organization,  the 


292  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

Army  Railway  Traffic  Service,  was  formed  by  the  consolida- 
tion of  the  traffic  offices  which  the  several  export  bureaus  of 
the  War  Department  had  maintained  at  New  York.  When  the 
Army  Traffic  Service  took  hold,  in  the  late  winter  of  1918,  the 
Port  could  handle  at  the  maximum  400  cars  a  day  of  export 
government  freight.  At  the  time  of  the  armistice  the  Port  was 
putting  through  an  average  of  1,800  carloads  a  day;  the  record 
day  was  4,000  cars.  The  Service  allocated  space  for  freight 
on  the  cargo  and  passenger  transports,  stationed  men  through- 
out the  New  York  yards  to  keep  war  department  cars  mov- 
ing, handled  the  financial  end  of  army  shipping  in  the  ter- 
minal, and  worked  its  three  office  shifts  twenty-four  hours  a 
day  to  keep  up  with  the  business. 

Whenever  commercial  passenger  vessels  came  into  the  trans- 
port fleet,  it  was  necessary  to  refit  them  specially  for  such  ser- 
vice. The  work  of  refitting  ships  fell  to  the  Port's  vessel  main- 
tenance and  repair  division.  All  transports  crossing  the  war 
zone  were  required  to  go  armed.  This  meant  the  installation 
of  gun  platforms  on  both  troop  and  cargo  carriers.  In  equip- 
ping merchant  passenger  boats  as  troopships,  the  refitters  liter- 
ally crammed  them  with  standee  bunks,  building  these  in 
wherever  there  were  a  few  cubic  feet  of  spare  room,  even 
constructing  them  in  companionways  which  could  be  closed 
off.  The  constructors  built  rows  upon  rows  of  temporary  state- 
rooms in  the  transports,  fitted  up  special  bath  houses  on  their 
decks,  and  installed  ship  hospitals.  The  hospital  wards  were 
entirely  lined  with  white  enamel,  and  their  floors  were  of 
sanitary  concrete  composition.  Each  transport  required  at  least 
one  false  deck  on  which  to  stow  the  additional  lifeboats  and 
life  rafts  required  by  regulations.  The  galley  facilities  of  the 
ordinary  passenger  vessel  had  to  be  greatly  expanded  by  the 
installation  of  ovens,  steam  tables,  and  other  cooking  equip- 
ment. 

The  Port's  maintenance  and  repair  division  operated  a  large 
marine  repair  shop  at  the  Hoboken  piers  to  take  care  of  the 
trip  repairs  needed  by  our  transports.  This  shop  was  frequently 
of  extraordinary  usefulness.   At  one   time   during   the   cold 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        293 

weather  of  early  1918,  the  transport  Finland  was  loading 
2,000  troops  for  France.  On  the  night  before  she  was  to  sail, 
the  entire  sanitary  system  built  on  her  decks  froze  tight,  and 
many  of  the  pipes  burst.  Under  ordinary  conditions  the  ship 
would  have  had  to  go  to  a  yard  for  repairs  and  would  have 
missed  the  convoy.  The  repair  shop  put  her  in  condition  within 
a  few  hours,  and  she  sailed  at  the  appointed  time.  During  the 
period  of  embarkation  the  shop  was  manned  with  a  military 
staff  known  as  Ship  Repair  Shop  Unit  No.  301,  an  organiza- 
tion unique  in  the  Army.  The  maintenance  and  repair  division 
was  later  to  render  a  most  important  service,  for  it  was  the 
agency  which,  after  the  armistice,  converted  the  fleet  of  army 
cargo  carriers  into  troop  transports  and  thus  enabled  the 
Government  to  bring  home  the  A.  E.  F.  in  so  short  a  time. 

From  Hoboken  departed  the  army  couriers  carrying  urgent 
official  mail  from  Washington  to  the  general  headquarters  of 
the  A.  E.  F.  at  Chaumont,  France.  For  many  months  the  War 
Department  relied  upon  the  regular  mails;  but  the  A.  E.  F. 
postal  service  labored  under  difficulties,  and  the  dispatch  of 
mail  was  slow.  Several  branches  of  the  War  Department 
sought  to  beat  the  mail  by  sending  their  more  important  letters 
to  France  by  courier.  Eventually  the  Embarkation  Service 
undertook  to  perform  this  service  for  the  entire  Army.  It  set 
up  the  courier  service,  a  tight  little  corps  composed  of  a  resolute 
handful  of  commissioned  and  non-commissioned  officers.  Cou- 
rier headquarters  were  in  Washington;  a  branch  courier  office 
at  Hoboken  attended  to  the  details  of  courier  travel.  Back  and 
forth  between  Chaumont  and  Washington  sped  the  couriers, 
carrying  sacks  of  mail  in  both  directions  and  cutting  down  the 
delivery  time  by  at  least  a  week.  The  first  courier  started  out 
in  early  July,  1918.  From  that  time  until  June  30,  1919,  the 
Service  dispatched  sixty-three  couriers  to  France.  A  courier  left 
Washington  every  fifth  or  sixth  day.  The  average  consignment 
of  mail  in  charge  of  a  single  courier  was  thirteen  sacks.  In  the 
first  year  of  operation,  the  couriers  took  614  sacks  of  mail  to 
Europe  and  brought  back  1,408  sacks. 


294  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

As  soon  as  this  convenient  service  was  inaugurated,  some  of 
the  army  producing  bureaus  took  advantage  of  it  to  send  to 
France  urgently  needed  consignments  of  such  small  sup- 
plies as  firing  pins  for  machine  guns  and  sighting  instru- 
ments for  field  artillery.  The  accumulation  of  packages  of  this 
sort  soon  began  to  hamper  the  speed  of  the  couriers;  and 
presently  the  Embarkation  Service  created  a  kindred  organi- 
zation known  as  the  War  Department  Overseas  Express  Ser- 
vice, whose  traveling  messengers  handled  official  overseas 
parcels  only. 

The  mail  courier  waited  in  Washington  until  the  last 
train  that  would  take  him  to  New  York  in  time  to  catch 
the  convoy — usually  a  midnight  train.  He  and  his  sergeant 
piled  the  mail  sacks  into  a  sleeping-car  stateroom,  locked  the 
door,  and  stood  watch  and  watch  until  morning;  for  nearly  all 
the  mail  in  their  charge  was  highly  confidential.  At  Manhattan 
Junction  in  the  Jersey  meadows  a  port  motor  truck  was  wait- 
ing next  morning  to  transfer  courier  and  baggage  directly  to 
Hoboken.  If  by  chance  the  convoy  had  gone  down  the  bay, 
the  Port  bundled  the  two  soldiers  and  their  mail  sacks  into  a 
fast  launch  and  hurried  them  to  the  rendezvous. 

On  the  transport  a  room  was  assigned  to  the  courier  and  his 
assistant.  The  two  men  lived  with  the  mail  all  the  way  across 
the  ocean.  The  sacks  were  piled  in  the  stateroom,  and  one  man 
or  the  other  always  watched  them.  Meanwhile  Hoboken  had 
cabled  to  Brest  that  a  courier  was  on  the  way.  The  transport 
had  scarcely  lost  headway  in  the  French  harbor  when  a  launch 
darted  out  from  shore.  Into  this  the  courier  and  his  assistant 
loaded  their  sacks.  Often  they  were  on  the  Paris  train,  locked  in 
a  special  compartment,  before  any  of  the  troops  on  their  ship 
had  yet  landed.  At  Paris  an  A.  E.  F.  courier  met  the  train  to 
take  over  the  sacks  directed  to  our  army  representatives  in 
England.  The  American  courier  continued  on  to  Chaumont 
with  the  G.  H.  Q.  mail.  The  swiftest  trip  between  Washing- 
ton and  Chaumont  was  made  in  six  days  and  a  few  hours.  The 
courier  who  set  this  record  left  Washington  at  midnight,  early 
the  next  morning  boarded  a  ship  in  a  20-knot  convoy,  barely 


NOTES  OF  TIDEWATER  ACTIVITIES        295 

caught  the  Paris  train  at  Brest,  and  made  a  perfect  train  con- 
nection in  Paris. 

The  courier  service  made  itself  extremely  valuable  by  taking 
to  France  the  cargo  manifests  of  freight  transports  ahead  of 
the  arrival  of  the  ships.  It  was  out  of  the  question  to  send  such 
voluminous  itemized  invoices  by  cable;  yet  it  was  important 
that  the  army  ports  in  France  receive  the  manifests  before  the 
cargo  arrived.  The  regular  post  office  could  not  be  relied  upon 
to  forward  the  manifests  in  time.  Therefore,  as  soon  as  the 
American  ports  dispatched  cargo  transports  they  sent  the 
freight  manifests  to  Washington,  and  the  Embarkation  Ser- 
vice forwarded  them  to  France  by  the  first  courier.  The  couriers 
also  brought  to  the  United  States  the  lists  of  American  casual- 
ties in  the  war. 

When  the  Peace  Conference  opened  in  Paris,  the  State  De- 
partment required  almost  exclusive  use  of  the  Atlantic  cables, 
and  the  use  of  the  cables  by  the  Army  was  cut  down  to  little 
or  nothing.  The  War  Department  then  turned  to  the  next 
fastest  means  of  communication,  the  couriers,  and  invented 
a  new  kind  of  official  dispatch,  known  as  the  courier  cable- 
gram. The  couriers  carried  much  mail  between  Washington 
and  the  Peace  Conference.  Each  eastbound  courier  had  at  least 
one  pouch  of  state  department  mail  for  the  American  Peace 
Commission,  and  some  of  the  returning  couriers  carried  as 
many  as  six  pouches  addressed  to  the  State  Department.  All 
the  mail  between  the  White  House  in  Washington  and  Presi- 
dent Wilson  in  Paris  was  carried  by  army  couriers.  During 
the  period  of  hostilities  the  dozen  or  so  couriers  were  the  only 
soldiers  attached  to  a  home  station  who  were  permitted  to 
wear  cloth  shoulder  insignia.  After  the  armistice,  the  New 
York  Port  of  Embarkation  adopted  a  shoulder  insigne,  a  gray 
cloth  rectangle  upon  which  was  worked  the  monogram  P.  of 
E.,  N.  Y.  This  and  the  courier  badge  were  the  only  home 
insignia.  Both  embarkation-service  and  A.  E.  F.  couriers  wore 
on  their  shoulders  the  silver  greyhound,  a  fit  emblem  of  their 
service. 

Couriers  were  favorite  children  of  the  Army.  Quick  passages 


296  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

by  the  American  couriers  brought  rewards  in  France,  in  the 
form  of  trips  to  European  cities  in  the  A.  E.  F.  courier  service. 
After  the  armistice  some  of  the  American  couriers  went  by 
airplane  from  Paris  to  Brussels,  even  to  Rome ;  others  traveled 
by  train  to  the  Balkans  and  to  Constantinople.  The  little  band 
developed  a  proud  esprit  de  corps^  of  which  one  evidence  was 
its  pert  self-applied  nickname,  "Fast  Company." 


Photo  by  Signal   Corps 

EMERGENCY  LIFE  RAFTS  FOR  TROOP  TRANSPORTS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

EQUIPPING  LIFEBOATS  FOR  TRANSPORTS 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


EMBARKING  TROOPS  MARCHING  THROUGH 
NEWPORT  NEWS 


Photo  by   Signal   Corps 

TROOPS  APPROACHING  PIER,  NEWPORT  NEWS 


CHAPTER  XXI 
AT  NEWPORT  NEWS 

HOBOKEN  possessed  no  monopoly  of  the  transoceanic 
shipment  of  soldiers  and  military  supplies.  On  the 
shores  surrounding  Hampton  Roads  in  Virginia  there 
was  another  large  enterprise  in  transportation,  conducted  by  a 
port  of  embarkation  equal  in  rank  to  that  at  New  York, 
with  its  own  command  and  its  own  complete  installation  of 
utilities.  New  York  specialized  in  the  embarkation  of  troops. 
The  Newport  News  Port  of  Embarkation  sent  out  some  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  troops,  but  its  specialty  was  the  export 
of  supplies,  particularly  heavy  supplies,  to  the  A.  E.  F. — 
notably  steel  rails,  motor  trucks,  ammunition,  and  high  explo- 
sives. The  physical  equipment  of  the  Newport  News  Port  of 
Embarkation  included  such  installations  as  the  General  Ord- 
nance Supply  Depot  at  Pig  Point  on  the  southern  shore  of 
Hampton  Roads,  the  Norfolk  Engineering  Depot,  and  the 
great  Norfolk  Army  Base.  These  were  among  the  largest  estab- 
lishments in  the  whole  army  supply  chain.  Also  at  Newport 
News  was  the  principal  embarkation  depot  for  the  horses  and 
mules  sent  to  the  A.  E.  F. 

As  a  sender  of  troops  to  France,  Newport  News  tended  to 
specialization.  It  was  the  principal  embarkation  point  for 
stevedores  and  labor  troops;  also,  many  of  the  artillery  regi- 
ments boarded  ship  there.  It  embarked  balloon  companies  and 
airplane  squadrons.  The  first  embarkation  at  Newport  News 
occurred  on  January  17,  1918,  when  eight  aero  squadrons 
sailed  on  the  transport  H.  R.  Mallory.  From  that  time  on, 
various  scattering  imits  sailed  at  intervals  until  April,  when 
the  troop  embarkation  from  Newport  News  began  in  earnest. 


298  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

At  the  time  of  the  armistice  Newport  News  had  sent  overseas 
nearly  300,000  troops. 

This  record  best  illustrates  the  significance  of  the  Virginia 
port  when  it  is  compared  with  what  occurred  at  other  Atlantic 
seaports.  The  earliest  embarkations  of  all  occurred  at  New 
York  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1917.  The  first  embarkation 
of  American  troops  from  any  port  other  than  New  York  took 
place  on  September  16,  1917,  when  the  io2d  Infantry  with 
a  field  hospital  and  an  ambulance  company,  all  units  of  the 
Twenty-sixth  Division,  boarded  the  White  Star  Steamship 
Canada  at  Montreal.  The  next  outside  embarkation  occurred 
at  Philadelphia  October  16,  1917,  when  the  3d  Cavalry  Regi- 
ment sailed  on  the  S.  S.  Northland.  On  the  day  before  Christ- 
mas, 1917,  the  White  Star  liner  Canada^  which  had  carried 
the  first  American  troops  from  Montreal,  took  on  board  the 
24th  Machine  Gun  Battalion,  a  trench-mortar  battery,  and  an 
evacuation  hospital,  at  Portland,  Maine.  On  April  13,  1918, 
Boston  began  functioning  as  an  embarkation  sub-port,  the 
153d  Infantry,  the  306th  Infantry,  and  the  latter's  machine 
gun  battalion  embarking  there  on  the  Cunarder  Karoa.  On 
May  26,  1918,  occurred  the  first  embarkation  from  Baltimore, 
Maryland,  the  303d  Engineers  boarding  the  S.  S.  Ajax  of  the 
Blue  Funnel  Line.  Now,  Montreal  and  Quebec  (during  the 
winter,  when  the  St.  Lawrence  River  was  not  navigable,  the 
ports  of  Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  and  St.  Johns,  New  Brunswick, 
were  used  by  our  Embarkation  Service  instead  of  Montreal 
and  Quebec),  Philadelphia,  Portland,  Boston,  and  Baltimore 
ranked  in  the  military  organization  as  sub-ports  of  the  New 
York  Port  of  Embarkation,  their  activities  being  commanded 
from  the  headquarters  at  Hoboken;  but  Newport  News 
possessed  no  auxiliary  ports. 

At  New  York  there  embarked  1,656,000  troops,  at  Newport 
News  288,000,  at  Boston  46,000,  at  Philadelphia  35,000,  at 
Montreal  34,000,  at  Quebec  11,000,  at  Portland  6,000,  at 
Halifax  5,000,  at  Baltimore  4,000,  and  at  St.  Johns  1,000. 
These  (approximate)  figures  fairly  measure  the  activities  of 
these  various  ports  as  points  of  embarkation  for  troops. 


AT  NEWPORT  NEWS  299 

The  work  of  the  Newport  News  Port  of  Embarkation  was 
similar  to  that  of  New  York,  though  it  was  on  a  smaller  scale. 
Newport  News  had  its  embarkation  camps  and  its  inspection 
and  supply  services.  Units  ordered  overseas  via  Newport  News 
went  through  much  the  same  embarkation  mill  as  that  at  New 
York.  The  problem  of  handling  troops  at  Newport  News  was 
never  exacting;  but  for  all  that  the  Port  had  its  own  peculiar 
troubles.  It  began  its  existence  with  port  facilities  much  farther 
from  adequacy  than  those  which  the  Army  was  able  to  utilize 
immediately  at  New  York,  The  whole  plant  at  Newport  News 
had  to  be  built  from  the  ground  up,  and  while  the  construc- 
tion was  in  actual  progress  the  Port  was  called  upon  to  handle 
an  immense  quantity  of  supplies,  especially  engineering  mate- 
rials needed  in  France  ahead  of  the  arrival  of  the  main  body  of 
troops.  The  history  of  the  Port  at  Newport  News  is,  then, 
largely  the  history  of  a  struggle  to  overcome  difficulties,  pro- 
vide a  working  equipment,  and  whip  into  shape  a  smoothly 
working  organization. 

The  ground  over  which  the  Port  held  jurisdiction  is  historic. 
Here  first  set  foot  on  the  soil  of  this  continent  some  of  the 
earliest  English  settlers  sent  out  from  the  mother  country  to 
America.  Close  to  Newport  News  are  the  ruins  of  the  aban- 
doned town  of  Jamestown,  Virginia,  the  first  English  settle- 
ment on  the  Atlantic  coast.  In  this  region  the  Indian  princess 
Pocahontas,  daughter  of  Chief  Powhatan,  saved  the  life  of 
Captain  John  Smith  and,  later,  married  John  Rolfe,  the 
wealthy  English  merchant.  It  is  worth  noting  that  two  of  the 
army  transports  which  sailed  regularly  from  Newport  News 
were  the  Powhatan  and  the  Pocahontas^  both  formerly  Ger- 
man liners,  remodeled  to  carry  thousands  of  American  soldiers 
to  the  battle  fields  of  France,  One  of  the  first  settlements  in 
this  region  was  planted  by  Captain  Newport,  who  commanded 
a  small  squadron  of  colonist  ships  which  he  brought  safely  into 
Chesapeake  Bay  in  the  spring  of  1607,  The  city  of  Newport 
News,  however,  was  named,  not  for  this  pioneer,  but  for  Sir 
William  Newce,  an  Irish  gentleman  who  sponsored  the  voyage 
of  Master  Cookin  in  1621,  in  a  vessel  carrying  eighty  colo- 


300  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

nists.  These  pioneers  settled  on  the  James  River  and  named 
their  settlement  New  Port  Newce,  which  the  phonetic  tend- 
ency in  spelling  later  modified  to  its  present  form. 

The  Government  selected  Newport  News  to  be  a  port  of 
embarkation,  not  because  of  its  historical  associations,  but 
rather  because  of  the  splendid  deep-water  facilities  of  the 
great  inland  harbor  known  as  Hampton  Roads.  This  salt- 
water basin  is  not  only  large  enough  to  give  safe  anchorage  to 
the  greatest  vessels  afloat — it  has  accommodated  the  whole 
North  Atlantic  Fleet  at  once — but  it  is  also  doubly  land- 
locked. Hampton  Roads  itself  has  only  a  narrow  entrance  into 
Chesapeake  Bay,  which  in  turn  is  enclosed  from  the  ocean  by 
the  Virginia  capes.  The  whole  Chesapeake  was  securely 
guarded  against  possible  enemy  attack  by  the  forts  on  Cape. 
Charles  and  Cape  Henry  and  by  submarine  nets  stretched  from 
one  cape  to  the  other.  Fortress  Monroe,  commanding  the  inlet 
to  Hampton  Roads,  gave  additional  protection  to  the  vital 
military  establishments  to  be  built  along  the  shores  of  that 
body  of  water.  The  northern  shore  of  Hampton  Roads  is  the 
end  of  the  long  peninsula  enclosed  between  the  York  and  the 
James  rivers,  which  in  this  region  are  not  so  much  flowing 
streams  as  broad,  deep  branches  of  the  sea.  On  the  southern- 
most point  of  this  peninsula  is  the  city  of  Newport  News, 
facing  south  across  Hampton  Roads  toward  the  city  of  Nor- 
folk, which  is  located  at  the  extreme  southern  comer  of  the 
bay.  The  facilities  built  for  the  Port  of  Embarkation  almost 
surrounded  this  deep  and  sheltered  body  of  water. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  when  it  became  certain  that 
the  Army  would  establish  a  port  of  embarkation  at  Hamp- 
ton Roads,  there  was  a  sharp  contest  between  Norfolk  and 
Newport  News  over  the  question  of  which  city  should  be  the 
port  headquarters.  Both  possessed  advantages.  On  each  side  of 
Hampton  Roads  were  located  some  of  the  most  modern  coal- 
ing docks  in  the  world,  at  the  tidewater  terminals  of  railroads 
leading  from  the  coal  fields  of  West  Virginia.  The  pier  of  the 
Chesapeake  &  Ohio  Railroad  at  Newport  News  could  load 
6,600  tons  of  coal  an  hour.  Both  cities  offered  extensive  ship- 


12.  Norfolk  Army  Base 

13.  Norfolk  Engineer  Depot 

14.  Pig  Point  Ordnance  IDepot 

15.  Camp  Lee 


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.  Norfolk  Army  Base 
.  Norfolk  Eneinetr  I 
.  Pig  Poin.  Orfn.nt, 


AT  NEWPORT  NEWS  301 

repairing  and  drydocking  facilities.  Norfolk  was  near  the 
Portsmouth  Navy  Yard;  at  Newport  News  was  located  the 
Newport  News  Shipbuilding  &  Drydock  Company,  operating 
one  of  the  largest  shipyards  in  the  world.  An  investigation  by 
an  army  board  in  the  spring  of  1917  made  it  evident  that 
neither  city  could  accommodate  all  the  utilities  of  a  complete 
port  of  embarkation.  The  board  recommended  the  use  of  sites 
in  both  cities  and  at  other  points  on  the  shores  of  Hampton 
Roads.  Since  it  was  convenient,  because  of  railroad  and  other 
conditions,  to  establish  most  of  the  port  fixtures  on  the  New- 
port News  side,  that  city  was  selected  for  the  headquarters. 
Major  General  Grote  Hutchinson,  Commander  of  the  Port, 
set  up  his  headquarters  at  Newport  News  on  July  11,  1917. 

Construction  was  a  much  more  dominant  characteristic  of 
the  war  activities  at  Newport  News  than  it  was  at  Hoboken. 
The  entire  period  of  hostilities  was  marked  by  continuous  ex- 
pansion in  military  building  on  the  shores  of  Hampton  Roads. 
The  vicinity  became  the  site  of  more  war  establishments  than 
were  located  in  any  other  equal  area  in  the  United  States. 
There  were  great  aviation  fields  and  divisional  and  special 
training  camps  near  by;  there  was  also  the  principal  overseas 
supply  base  of  the  Navy,  as  well  as  a  great  naval  training 
station.  The  Port  itself  soon  developed  into  an  enormous  and 
constantly  growing  institution,  its  growth  being  ended  only  by 
the  armistice. 

Like  New  York,  the  Newport  News  Port  of  Embarkation 
possessed  two  principal  embarkation  camps.  These  were  Camp 
Hill  and  Camp  Stewart.  Camp  Stewart,  the  larger,  was 
located  on  the  shore  of  Hampton  Roads  within  the  eastern  city 
limits  of  Newport  News.  Its  site  was  an  area  215  acres  in 
extent;  and  the  finished  camp  had,  in  the  section  given  over  to 
transient  troops,  capacity  for  450  officers  and  15,600  enlisted 
men.  The  camp  was  operated  by  a  permanent  force  of  40 
officers  and  1,230  enlisted  men,  troops  of  the  48th  Infantry 
Regiment  and  the  ilth  Cavalry. 

Adjoining  Camp  Stewart  on  the  east  and  occupying  a  cool 
and  pleasant  location  with  a  beautiful  outlook  across  Hamp- 


302  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

ton  Roads,  was  the  port  debarkation  hospital.  A  few  of  the 
hospital  wards  were  open  in  the  autumn  of  1917.  Construction 
continued,  and  a  year  later  the  hospital  could  accommodate 
nearly  4,500  patients.  It  had  become  one  of  the  largest  insti- 
tutions of  its  sort  in  the  world.  Here  were  landed  thousands 
of  the  American  soldiers  who  had  been  wounded  in  the  fighting 
in  Frai^ce. 

Camp  Hill  was  located  on  the  shore  of  the  James  River, 
about  a  half  mile  north  of  the  city  limits  of  Newport  News. 
This  was  a  smaller  camp,  with  accommodations  for  about  350 
officers  and  6,900  enlisted  men. 

Three  other  embarkation  camps  for  special  sorts  of  troops 
became  integral  with  the  port  plant.  One  of  these  was  Camp 
Abraham  Eustis,  located  some  twelve  miles  up  the  James 
River  on  the  Chesapeake  &  Ohio  Railroad,  not  far  from  the 
army  balloon  school  at  Lee  Hall,  Virginia.  Camp  Eustis  was 
a  combination  training  and  embarkation  camp  for  heavy  artil- 
lery regiments.  It  possessed  a  target  range  where  big  guns 
could  be  fired  under  the  direction  of  observers  in  captive 
balloons;  so  that  the  target  practice  gave  training  to  both 
the  artillerymen  and  the  aerial  observers  from  Lee  Hall. 

Camp  Morrison  was  the  Air  Service's  general  supply  depot 
and  embarkation  camp  at  Newport  News.  It  was  also  located 
on  the  shore  of  the  James  River  north  of  Newport  News,  about 
half  way  out  to  Camp  Eustis.  The  camp  site  was  a  mile-long 
narrow  rectangle  containing  300  acres.  The  C.  &  O.  Railroad 
supplied  good  transportation  facilities  between  the  camp  and 
the  embarkation  piers  at  Newport  News.  The  camp  equipment 
included  twenty-four  warehouses  for  the  storage  of  aeronauti- 
cal equipment,  and  also  twenty-seven  barrack  buildings  for  Air- 
Service  troops.  To  this  point  came  many  of  the  Army's  aero 
squadrons,  where  they  were  inspected  and  equipped  for  over- 
seas service  and,  in  some  cases,  given  additional  training  while 
waiting  for  their  transports. 

Camp  Alexander,  the  third  of  these  attached  camps,  was  a 
special  camp  for  the  training  and  embarkation  of  stevedore 
regiments  and  labor  battalions.  Here  were  trained  and  housed, 


AT  NEWPORT  NEWS  303 

also,  the  permanent  labor  detachments  assigned  to  the  Port 
of  Embarkation  at  Newport  News.  Camp  Alexander  was 
located  just  east  of  Camp  Hill. 

One  of  the  most  important  camps  at  Newport  News  was 
the  animal  embarkation  depot,  known  in  the  army  organiza- 
tion tables  as  Animal  Embarkation  Depot  No.  301,  situated 
between  Camp  Morrison  and  Camp  Hill.  The  depot  was  one 
of  the  first  utilities  built  at  the  port.  Its  corrals,  fenced  fields, 
and  pens  gave  accommodation  to  a  maximum  of  10,000 
animals.*  The  animal  embarkation  depot  occupied  seventy- 
seven  acres.  At  the  railroad  tracks  were  six  unloading  pens,  each 
of  capacity  for  350  horses  or  mules.  The  unloading  pens  also 
served  as  detention  corrals  in  which  animals  might  be  quaran- 
tined to  determine  the  presence  or  absence  of  disease.  Behind 
the  unloading  pens  were  twenty-four  regular  corrals,  each  for 
350  animals.  The  depot  maintained  a  great  animal  hospital 
for  the  treatment  of  the  various  maladies  which  afflict  beasts  of 
burden.  The  hospital  equipment  included  baths  and  tanks  for 
the  disinfection  of  animals  before  their  admittance  to  the 
regular  corrals. 

Practically  all  the  animals  sent  to  the  A.  E.  F.  passed 
through  this  depot.  Up  to  the  end  of  March,  1918,  the  embar- 
kations of  animals  from  Newport  News  had  approached 
30,000.  At  that  time  came  the  urgent  call  for  troops  in  France, 
an  event  which  made  it  necessary  to  divert  all  ocean  cargo  ton- 
nage to  the  shipment  of  supplies;  and  the  War  Department 
ceased  altogether  to  send  animals  to  France.  On  August  12, 
1918,  animal  shipments  began  again;  and  between  that  date 
and  the  end  of  November  nearly  40,000  horses  and  mules  left 
the  United  States  for  France,  most  of  which  embarked  at 
Newport  News. 

All  the  rest  of  the  port  establishment  had  to  do  with  the 

*  In  an  emergency  the  Army  had  the  use  of  corral  accommodations  for  5,000 
more  at  the  British  remount  depot  near  by.  Nearly  all  of  the  horses  and  mules 
purchased  by  the  British  Army  and  shipped  overseas  prior  to  1917  passed 
through  this  remount  depot  at  Newport  News.  The  British  began  shipping 
American  animals  in  December,  1914.  Our  first  shipment  occurred  on  October 
14,  1917. 


304  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

shipment  of  army  supplies.  The  equipment  included  a  line  of 
seaport  warehouses  in  the  city  of  Newport  News,  providing 
450,000  square  feet  of  storage  for  supplies  awaiting  loading. 
These  warehouses,  each  one  story  high,  were  plentifully  inter- 
spersed with  fire  walls  to  prevent  any  considerable  conflagra- 
tion. In  spite  of  the  dangerous  composition  of  many  of  the 
materials  handled  through  Newport  News,  there  was  no  fire 
or  explosion  of  any  consequence  during  the  whole  overseas 
movement. 

In  the  city  of  Newport  News  was  also  located  a  general 
depot  for  the  storage  and  issue  of  quartermaster  supplies  to 
embarking  troops  at  the  many  training  camps  in  the  vicinity. 
This  depot  occupied  a  large  abandoned  brewery  near  Camp 
Stewart,  and  it  administered  in  addition  the  quartermaster 
warehouses  in  the  various  embarkation  camps. 

The  administrative  headquarters  of  the  Port  occupied  a 
temporary  two-story  building  which  covered  an  entire  city 
block  in  Newport  News. 

While  troops  and  animals  were  embarking  at  the  city  of 
Newport  News,  the  Port  conducted  its  great  supply  export 
business  from  establishments  that  dotted  the  eastern  and 
southern  shores  of  Hampton  Roads.  One  of  the  largest  of 
these  was  the  huge  army  base  on  the  eastern  shore  of  Hamp- 
ton Roads,  a  few  miles  north  of  Norfolk.  This  installation, 
like  the  Brooklyn  Army  Base,  was  of  permanent  concrete  con- 
struction. It  consisted  of  great  warehouses  and  covered  piers 
for  the  handling  of  general  supplies  for  the  A.  E.  F. 

South  of  the  Norfolk  Army  Base,  within  the  northern  cor- 
porate limits  of  Norfolk,  was  the  General  Engineer  Depot 
of  the  Army.  The  physical  plant  the  Army  found  ready  for 
occupancy  when  war  was  declared:  it  had  just  been  built  by 
the  Norfolk  &  Western  Railroad  for  its  own  uses.  With  the 
improvements  and  conveniences  added,  this  was  one  of  the 
most  complete  ocean  terminals  in  America.  At  its  two  covered 
piers  eight  ocean  vessels  could  be  tied  up  for  simultaneous 
loading.  The  Army  built  additional  warehouses  and  installed 
large  stationary^  cranes  and  other  loading  machinery  for  han- 


[fggV^ "*■"■ "itMlIyi 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 

BOARDING  SHIP  AT  NEWPORT  NEWS 


rhvto  by   Signal  Corps 

CROWDED  TRANSPORT  LEAVING  PIER,  NEWPORT  NEWS 


AT  NEWPORT  NEWS  305 

dling  heavy  articles.  Much  of  the  engineering  material  sent  to 
the  A.  E.  F.  was  such  heavy  bulk  freight  as  steel  rails ;  and  the 
Engineer  Corps  found  it  necessary  to  lay  out  at  Norfolk  a 
classification  yard,  in  which  freight  of  similar  sorts,  coming 
in  by  rail,  could  be  dumped  together  in  piles,  upon  which  cargo 
ships  could  draw  for  complete  homogeneous  loads.  For  this 
purpose  the  Army  leased  170  acres  at  Portlock,  Virginia,  just 
south  of  Norfolk. 

On  a  site  of  600  acres  on  the  south  shore  of  Hampton 
Roads,  a  few  miles  northwest  of  Portsmouth  and,  by  water, 
five  miles  south  of  Newport  News,  the  Army  built  the  huge 
Pig  Point  General  Ordnance  Supply  Depot.  The  construction 
of  this  institution  began  in  November,  1917,  and  was  not  com- 
plete a  year  later,  although  by  that  time  the  depot  had  a  tre- 
mendous capacity.  Its  principal  function  was  to  store  and 
export  ammunition  and  high  explosives.  Since  the  water  along 
the  southern  shore  of  Hampton  Roads  is  comparatively  shal- 
low, all  loading  from  the  ordnance  depot  had  to  be  by  lighter- 
age. The  Port  set  aside  a  definite  area  of  Hampton  Roads  near 
Pig  Point  for  the  anchorage  of  powder  and  ammunition  ships, 
so  that  in  the  event  of  an  explosion  the  damage  to  the  port 
plant  would  be  confined  to  a  minimum.  Except  tugs  and  light- 
ers operating  between  the  powder  ships  and  the  ordnance 
depot,  no  vessels  were  allowed  to  enter  this  area.  The  depot 
consisted  principally  of  chains  of  powder  and  ammunition 
magazines.  Its  site  was  protected  by  an  unscalable  wire  fence 
with  sentry-boxes  every  500  feet  along  its  four  miles  of  length. 
At  the  time  of  the  armistice  the  depot  could  receive  and  export 
a  hundred  carloads  of  powder  and  ammunition  every  day. 

The  Government  conducted  at  Hampton  Roads  a  great  hous- 
ing enterprise  which  provided  living  quarters  for  thousands  of 
men  in  the  shipyards,  the  ship-repair  yards,  and  the  construc- 
tion gangs.  Many  barracks  were  built  for  the  troops  stationed 
at  the  port.  The  project  also  included  a  temporary  hotel  in 
Newport  News  for  casual  officers  awaiting  embarkation. 

Early  in  the  war,  A.  E.  F.  supplies  flooded  in  upon  New- 
port News,  and  for  many  months  the  port  organization  was 


3o6  THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE 

primarily  engaged  in  getting  its  head  above  water.  But  grad- 
ually the  port  facilities  began  to  measure  up  to  the  require- 
ments, and  in  the  end  Newport  News  could  meet  well-nigh 
any  conceivable  demand.  The  first  vessel  to  be  loaded  there 
was  the  Momus^  which  sailed  September  3,  1917,  with  a 
cargo  which  included  1,605  bales  of  hay  and  80  dismounted 
motor  trucks.  (The  first  freight  convoy  from  Chesapeake  Bay 
assembled  in  October,  1917,  but  none  of  its  ships  was  loaded 
at  Newport  News.)  The  first  animal  ship  was  the  Amphion^ 
formerly  the  German  Koln^  which  sailed  October  14  with  881 
mules,  1 69  horses,  and  forage  and  general  cargo. 

The  usual  procedure  for  a  cargo  vessel  at  Newport  News 
was  to  visit,  first,  the  piers  at  the  engineer  depot  at  Norfolk, 
where  it  took  on  heavy  materials  for  ballast,  and  then  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  army  base  or  to  the  piers  at  Newport  News  for 
general  supplies. 

The  Port  repaired  ships  and  refitted  ships  for  transport  ser- 
vice in  the  yards  of  the  Newport  News  Shipbuilding  &  Dry- 
dock  Company.  This  was  not  a  felicitous  arrangement,  for  the 
facilities  of  the  shipbuilding  company  were  sorely  needed  by 
other  government  agencies.  Had  the  war  continued,  the  New- 
port News  port  equipment  would  probably  have  included  a 
large  ship-repair  yard.  The  Port  produced  animal  transports 
by  building  stalls  into  cargo  vessels,  took  ships  from  the  tropi- 
cal trades  and  built  on  deck  protection  so  that  they  could 
brave  the  winter  weather  conditions  of  the  North  Atlantic, 
and  also  refitted  for  the  military  service  many  of  the  ex- 
German  vessels — particularly  ex-German  cargo  ships,  some 
of  which  had  been  seized  by  Cuba,  Brazil,  and  other  Latin- 
American  co-belligerents. 

Newport  News  conducted  a  large  salvage  enterprise  for 
reclaiming  food,  clothing,  and  other  supplies  left  behind  by 
embarking  troops.  The  Port  also  handled  a  few  casuals.  These 
fell  under  the  command  of  a  special  officer,  who  compiled  the 
service  records  of  such  soldiers  and  organized  them  into  com- 
panies. Finally,  Newport  News,  being  the  Army's  principal 
cargo  port,  was  confronted  by  the  necessity  of  providing  crews 


AT  NEWPORT  NEWS  307 

for  the  cargo  carriers  of  the  army  fleet — a  difficult  matter,  be- 
cause the  Norfolk  district  was  a  poor  labor  market.  Labor 
scarcity  of  all  sorts  was  a  hampering  factor  throughout  the 
entire  development  of  Hampton  Roads.  Eventually  it  became 
next  to  impossible  to  secure  civilian  crews  for  our  cargo  trans- 
ports without  delaying  them  in  port.  This  difficulty  virtually 
disappeared  as,  more  and  more  completely,  the  Navy  took 
over  the  operation  of  cargo  vessels  and  manned  them  with 
crews  of  enlisted  men. 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


JUL  2  8  1980 

DATE  DUE 

SEP     9 

986 

CAYLORO 

rniMTcoiN  U.S.A. 

HOW  AMERICA  \ 
WENT  TO  WAR 


THE  ROAD  TO 
FRANCE 

CROWELL  AND 
WILSON 

YALE 

UNIVERSITY 

PRESS 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


D570.72  C7  v. I 

Crowell,  Benedict,  1869- 

The  road  to  France... 


